Playdom enters the Magic Kingdom (part 2)

Last week Playdom’s acquisition by Disney closed. This week we spoke with Ben Chen, Head of Sales at Playdom, about SocialGaming’s mass adoption and future along with how brands can capitalize on the reallocation of consumer time in this space. To dimensionalize the opportunity briefly, with 45-minutes+ average engagement time, 100m US and UK players (over 200mm worldwide), and some early evidence that SocialGaming dynamics can change offline behaviors, this is a space marketers need to understand. Farmville, the first SocialGaming blockbuster, earns over 17.5 millon daily average users (DAUs)–only football, Obama interviews and a handful of other TV shows can garner that level of viewership–while delivering the kind of revenue that would put it on the top of Hollywood’s box office charts. To punctuate further, the 2010 Emmy’s earned 13.5 mm viewers and topped that week’s viewership charts. So think TV scale, Hollywood revenues and Gaming/Facebook levels of time and engagement.

Some additional data points:

• SocialGaming earns 10% of all internet time spent online surpassing email in time, second only to its parent, Social Networking
• SocialGaming raised $1.5 million in 5 days for Haiti
• The rich get richer–Zynga’s latest hit, Frontierville, reached 5mm users in just 13 days

Here’s our interview with Ben Chen of Playdom, the third largest app developer in Facebook:

Highlights:

What’s driving growth? Having a platform like Facebook with 500mm. Ben mentions the “K-factor” which is a graphing term applied by epidemiology to describe a viral effect.

Success rates in launching games? 60+%–with 2-years

Consumers are smart

Social City, 50 minutes average session, no drop off in levels of engagement until “level 29” with 3 million Daily Average Users (DAUs)

For consumers, it’s a commitment, so they want to see that the game will be there for the long haul and mandates respect for the consumer

How to respect the consumer?

• What’s best for game and the user
• Assets for game, additive a value-exchange for the user and brand
• Playdom won’t short their user by popping up pre-rolls and banners to interrupt.