Instant dipsticks, instant bucks ... all in the game

Online surveys provide a faster, cost effective alternative

India-based Chimpoo.com, a virtual world for kids, had 36 hours to conduct a dipstick study on the time allotted to children in France for accessing the Internet.

The company realised that it had little time to do a physical study and used the online platform of Games2win before introducing its product in that market.

“In the physical world, it will take days to collect 1,000 unique responses of a certain demographic. Besides, it could cost Rs500 per contact. Even then, you can never be certain that agencies will always be true to their methodology. Our insights platform, we would charge Rs100 per question and answer, and hence charge Rs1 lakh,” says Alok Kejriwal, chief executive and co-founder of Mumbai-based Games2Win.

The insight technology is based on placing cookies (with consumer consent) when users log in to gaming portals or other partner sites and on social networking sites like Facebook. The cookie (a text-only string that is stored into the memory of your browser) on the basis of earlier answers allows the gaming company to laser-target questions to the user.

For instance, if the user answered “I am a boy”, the gaming company could ask him “How often do you shave your beard in a week?”.

“We already have a proof-of-concept for this platform, which has the ability to generate volume responses across all key markets in the world. We serve 20 million consumers month-on-month. We believe that we will be able to serve approximately one million responses a month, and price the same at around 20 cents, generating $2.4 million (about Rs11 crore) per year. Our primary target is the US, UK and European markets. We will launch this in India in the next three years, as Indian brand owners still believe in the meet-and-greet format for gathering feedback,” said Kejriwal.

Games2Win is not the only gaming firm that taps this revenue stream. Hyderabad-based 7Seas Technologies is another company that has provided the technology to three brands. It is working with a multi-national kitchen appliances manufacturer which recently forayed into the Indian market, a domestic cosmetics products company and a south India-based incense sticks maker.

“The appliances manufacturer approached us to get a dipstick audit on the Indian consumer’s behavorial pattern before launching their products by early 2011. The other two companies wanted to find out whether their existing customers were satisfied with their products and to reach out to them with newer variants in the months to come,” said L Maruti Sanker, managing director of 7Seas.

Dream11’s flagship Fantasy Cricket, part of the fantasy sports industry - a $4.5-billion market in the US and Canada alone - attracts more than 450,000 users. “We utilise our fantasy cricket platform to gather insights into consumer psyche. It has proven to be an extremely ‘sticky’ game with a very successful user engagement experience,” said Yashraj Vakil chief operating officer, Dream11.

Kejriwal said the next big step in brand consumer insights will be the social networking and mobile space. Games2Win currently has 26 games in the gaming portfolio and its Super Mom2 was the second largest game in the US on the iPhone app stores last month. Over 1.2 million Americans had downloaded the game.