Freemium is not the only way: VMFive gets $6m series A to turn ads into playable demos

The VMFive team.

At last count, there were about a bazillion apps in the three main mobile app stores. And about two bazillion games. Anyone with a smartphone has a world of choice – and that’s a world of pain for app developers.

That’s why a bunch of startups are working on ways to make it easier for devs to pull in new app users. The angle taken by VMFive is to create a system whereby app developers can offer people a way to try out an app or game without having to download anything. Essentially, it’s an ad that you can play. “The playable ad is the future of mobile ads,” says Jessie Wu, director of marketing at VMFive.

Can you remember the last time you clicked a mobile ad?

It also works as a way to allow people to demo in-app purchases before committing to paying for them.

“It can not only help to drive more downloads by letting users try out before downloading, but also help to drive more in-app-purchases for higher level or special weapons by letting users try out after downloading and before purchasing,” Jessie explains to Tech in Asia.

The VMFive team claims that app users and gamers really dig it. “It upends the interaction between ends users and ads, resulting in an astonishing five to 15 percent download conversion rate, far in excess of the results achieved in traditional banner ads and video ads,” claims the startup’s blurb. It’s easy to see how developers might want to give it a shot when conventional ad clickthrough rates are generally below one percent. Can you remember the last time you clicked a mobile ad (not by accident)?

App streaming

The Taiwan-based startup last week revealed a series A funding round worth US$6 million. The investment comes from CDIB Partners, Trend Micro, GMobi, and Cherubic Ventures. The founders are Owen Lo, Sam Ding, and Shawn Lee.

This funding represents quick progress for the team, which spent quite a bit of time in the past couple of years pitching its Adplay system across the region, picking up a win at TechCrunch Beijing 2014 and then impressing at the 2015 Asian Entrepreneurship Awards.

“AdPlay is targeting markets with a mature mobile gaming and advertising industry, and good wireless internet infrastructure as well,” says Jessie, explaining why VMFive is now focusing on Japan and South Korea. “Both of the countries ranks top five on Google Play’s game revenues list.”

Photo credit: Johan Larsson.

The team insists that the rise of freemium apps and games won’t impact the appeal of Adplay for developers. They explain the way its system streams the demos means that apps won’t get bloated by adding in lots of extra graphics and code in order to show the ads. Plus, freemium has no alternative to the way that its tech can allow gamers to test out in-app purchases. VMFive prefers to keep it all virtual and streaming. That allows a particular app or game to show users a variety of playable ads or virtualized levels or features.

“App streaming is the future of the mobile market,” enthuses Jessie. “Try to think of the future with high-speed internet, you can run all kinds of mobile apps on the cloud, and stream the content to your Apple Watch, Google Glass, or the monitor in your Tesla. Users only need light end devices.”