MindJolt, a gaming and advertising platform acquired by MySpace cofounder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe, has been busy these last few months. It was just last March that DeWolfe announced his team and the acquisition of MindJolt, along with a $20ish million round of financing from Austin Ventures.
MindJolt remains profitable, says DeWolfe, and has maintained user numbers despite Facebook policy changes that drastically affected viral growth of all game developers. They’ve focused on revenue per user growth over this last period, making the already profitable company even more so.
They’re now releasing new monetization tools for third party game developers called AdJolt. These include highly targeted ads and, more interestingly, a virtual currency product that developers can use for power ups, virtual goods, etc.
Mochi Media launched a similar product last year that greatly increased revenue per thousand games, from $0.50 to $6.50 or so. MindJolt isn’t getting specific about their results, but one third party developer, Adam Jones Productions, says “AdJolt has dramatically increased our revenues.” MindJolt shares revenue 50/50 with developers.
The biggest benefit of MindJolt, beyond monetization, is the cross promotion of games across the network. Third party developers can effectively join a federation to get some of the same cross promotion benefits that big players like Zynga have within their own network of games. It’s as simple as a scrolling visual unit on the top of apps that shows a few other games on MindJolt. These are chosen editorially, algorithmically and via paid promotions, says DeWolfe.
The company, we hear, has revenue in the $20 million range and is profitable. And in the next few weeks we may be seeing their games become available on the iPad and iPhone.