Kiip it Real

Once every blue moon, we profile a Kiip employee to try to find out a deep, dark secret about their personality. If you like what you’re seeing, follow our blog (here), like us on facebook or follow us on twitter.

User Stats
Department: Business Development & Analytics
Schooling: Groton School, Bowdoin College
Started with Kiip: January 1, 2012
twitter handle: @yongsoochung

What is Kiip?
What a profound question. Kiip is the best rewards network that leverages the most powerful force: emotion. Meaningful moments tied with relevancy in rewards is what will power a new wave of mobile advertising.

How did you get here?
I took Muni. Public transportation is important (but slow in SF).

Where are you going?
A lot of places. There’s a lot of places I haven’t visited, but that will have to wait. Right now I’m committed to helping this business grow.

What do you do when you’re not Kiiping?
Usually fist-bumping at music festivals. Or anywhere really.

What’s a reward fit for Yong-Soo?
Time.

What’s your favorite movie?
All past and future Pixar movies.

Hope you’ve learned a bit about Yong-Soo; look for him fist-bumping all over San Francisco. Feel free to ask him anything on twitter, @yongsoochung. Next time we ‘Meet a Kiiper’, we’ll be finding out somebody’s super secret power animal.

Out of Milk is simple–it makes lists and it’s darn good at it. Intended for grocery shopping, Out of Milk will help you manage your pantry and compare what you have with what you need. The app also benefits from nice-to-have features such as excellent voice recognition, barcode scanning and local deal-finding that can help you get the best bang for your buck. With Out of Milk, you’ll be able to create new lists in seconds.

Out of Milk tracks what you need in an easy-to-read manner, while maintaining smooth app navigation. Nobody likes making lists that they can never find. With Out of Milk, you can craft lists while adding or subtracting items in a moment’s notice. Ideally, this should help make shopping experiences faster and more efficient.

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It’s our favorite time of the year again! The demand for another Build Fund was insurmountable, and this year is a little different – with our expansion outside gaming, the second Build Fund is open to indie developers of any app.

This year’s Build Fund surrounds one central theme: creation. Sometimes, we get lost in the shuffle of the day to day, the incremental gains, the iteration. Some of the best games and apps today that have inspired entirely new genres came from something less scientific: a spark of genius and inspiration. We want to help facilitate that, being true supporters of genius without getting in the way. We’re massive fans of the independent developer community and can’t wait to take these apps to the next level.

In this year’s fund, we’ve partnered with Pepsi to support health and fitness app submissions, with chosen developers being able to integrate rewards from Propel. Pepsi has been a huge supporter of our Fitness Channel and we’re thrilled they’ve jumped on board.

Here’s the goods the ten chosen developers get:

•$10,000 in funds

•$5,000 worth of amazing services, including:
     -$2000 AWS credit from Amazon
     -Six months Pro access from Parse
     -Six months Pro access from Urban Airship
     -Six months Premium access from Localytics
     -One year Enterprise License from Crittercism

•Priceless advice from an all-star roster of mentors, including:
     -Phill Ryu, Co-Creator of Clear and MacHeist
     -Jon Jordan, Pocket Gamer
     -Phil Black, True Ventures
     -Adam D’Augelli, True Ventures
     -Lee Linden, Facebook Gifts (previously Tapjoy and Karma)
     -Lars Leckie, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
     -Kevin Talbot, Relay Ventures
     -Mario Wynands, PikPok Games
     -Scott Kveton, Urban Airship
     -Matt Van Horn, Path
     -Matt Hunter, Jawbone
     -Derek van Vliet, Get Set Games
     -Markus Kassulke, HandyGames
     -Robert Kwok, Crittercism

Having experts who have succeeded in the market is a huge help for developers striking out on their own for the first time, and this entire initiative is our way of helping developers kickstart their apps and overcome the financial obstacles in the indie landscape.

The deadline is May 30th, so apply today and learn more at kiip.me/fund. Build on!

Thanks to all the amazing press on this years fund! Check out articles from:
TechCrunch
VentureBeat
The Next Web
Fast Company
Pocket Gamer
The Drum

Any questions? Email us!

What an exciting week. Not only was Kiip featured in Fast Company’s The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies 2013 but was also listed on Adweek’s feature highlighting seven “would-be mobile titans” the same day. When you’re alongside innovators such as Amazon, Google, Facebook or Square it’s hard not to believe you’re creating something very right.

Fast Company ranked Kiip no. 45 on their list, “for making mobile ads that people want.” 45 of 50 might not seem like a celebratory engagement, but it is when discussing the world’s most innovative companies. Fast Company also listed Kiip as the #3 most innovative mobile company of 2013, bested only by Uber and Evernote.

We consider those two pretty good company. Fast Company explained Kiip’s appeal as, “…twofold. An advertiser greets users just at the moment they’re feeling good about themselves, and the ad has tangible value.” The write-up also made an amazing skee-ball photoshoot a reality (above).

Not long after Fast Company’s list hit the web, Adweek spotlighted Kiip in “They Might Be Giants, From Google to startups like Square, a look at seven would-be mobile titans.” Adweek noted that, “unlike Kiip’s competitors, Wong [CEO, Kiip] has made sure his platform feels serendipitous,” something we hope makes a Kiip reward feel truly rewarding. The article also gave light to a new Brian Wong caricature (below).

We’re humbled to be amongst such great companies working to create the amazing. In the words of Brian Wong (from Fast Company), “Everything’s better when you’re happy.”

Another year, another round of New Year’s resolutions to get healthy and stay fit. With the increased adoption of mobile fitness applications, we can now use data to answer the common questions surrounding New Year’s resolutions. Do people actually follow through on their resolutions — do more people hit the gym, and if so, for how long? Kiip’s presence in fitness applications puts us in a unique position to answer these questions. For this post, we used a sample size of just under 10 million user sessions across a 90 day period starting on November 1st, 2012.

Workout Times Increase

From December 31, 2012 to January 2nd, 2013 total time spent in fitness applications increased 177% and sessions per day increased 45%. Interesting to note that these increases start on January 2nd (New Year’s day hangovers likely to blame!). Not only are more users working out, but their sessions are 96% longer for the two days after New Year’s celebrations. The green vertical bar represents midnight on January 1st, 2013.

So is this increase in workout time driven by existing users getting back on track, or from new users just breaking into the workout life?

User Growth Before and After New Year’s The largest driver of user growth is from new users entering fitness applications — a 43% increase — while existing user sessions increased by 32%. Although the new user growth rate declined over the month of January, existing users has been steady, meaning many of the new users are still dedicated to their resolutions. While we don’t have offline data to compare to, it seems regularly recording workouts in fitness applications helps you stay on track.

Most Popular Workout Time is….

So now we know that New Year’s resolutions aren’t complete BS…A deeper dive into the data that Kiip collects surfaces some more interesting insights. Turns out that the most popular workout time is 8:00PM. Naturally, not many people are working out between 2:00am - 4:00am. Workouts are most common on Wednesdays and Thursdays — possibly after the early week crush.

Kiip Moving Forward

The cross-section of data we collect across hundreds of applications continues to unearth interesting user behavior — this is the first of many posts that turns our big data into smart data.

Methodology

For those interested in how we collect data, the Kiip SDK sends a timestamp when a user opens and closes an application; this is recorded as one session. From this data we calculate session length, sessions per day, and sessions per hour. We also collect when a new user appears in an application, which allows us to calculate new user growth, as well as user retention. Of course, the SDK also sends “moments” — in-application achievements (completing a 5k, reaching a workout goal, beating a level in a game, etc) that trigger a user reward. For example, we gave away Propel to fitness users in December. Just over 1 billion moments were sent across our mobile application network in 2012.

Six months ago we shared a ‘moment of happiness’ – an $11 million series B consisting of “very smart and influential money.” As you may already know, we’ve long been anxiously awaiting the reveal of an originally hidden backer: Interpublic Group (IPG). BAM!

Much to our enjoyment, the internet and twittersphere lit up at the news of this, adding to our ever-widening smile when thinking of things to come at Kiip. Fast Company’s Co.Create blog explained that, “Though the two-year-old Kiip is young, much like its 21-year-old founder Brian Wong, a partnership with the company makes a lot of sense…” Likewise, TechCrunch noted, “It’s a great announcement for Kiip, since it gives extra legitimacy to the company’s relatively new model…” Even several days after lifting the veil, we saw tons of twitter reposts and congratulatory remarks. Thanks to everyone who shared!

In the words of Kiip co-founder and CEO Brian Wong, “Our eventual goal as a company is to own every single achievement moment on the planet, whether it be you hit your energy savings goals with your Nest thermostat or you were able to get good mileage with your hybrid [car].” [VentureBeat]

This announcement certainly means big things for us at Kiip. We’re excited to have the opportunity to work with the great minds at the IPG Media Lab and IPG Mediabrands in our quest to reward a mobile army that is achieving everyday.

Kiip on rockin’ in the New Year,

The Kiip team

P.S. In case you’re wondering, here’s many of the articles covering the announcement:

TechCrunch, Fast Company, VentureBeat, AdWeek, AdExchanger, Digiday, Business Insider, The Drum, Pocketgamer.biz, Inside Mobile Apps, betakit, Social Times

Everyone is searching for happiness. Where can we find it? Here at Kiip we have gone hunting for happiness…

We just made some huge changes to how Kiip works, inside and out. Have no fear - existing applications likely will have hardly noticed and will not be affected, save for a few less rewards over the last 24 hours.

Please check out the improvements and upgrade when you can - we really think it makes Kiip that much better.

Transitioning to Kiip’s New API

With the release of updated SDK’s, an API and documentation, many things are changing in how you utilize the Kiip platform.

Goodbye Achievements and Leaderboards

Kiip is introducing a completely new system for recording the moments of achievement in your application. Simply, “Moments”.

For existing applications, all existing achievements and leaderboards have been migrated to Moments. This should not effect your application in any way.

You’ll notice if you log-in to app.kiip.me that there is a tab named “Moments”. This shows you what moments have been sent to your application.

Creating New Moments

No more adding achievements and leaderboards manually - just simply save a moment and we’ll automatically show it to you on the dashboard.

Using our new SDK’s, it’s as simple as:

[[Kiip sharedInstance] saveMoment:@"Hello World" withCompletionHandler:nil];

You can download the SDK and follow a guide over at docs.kiip.me, our new documentation center.

A New Look

Saving a moment does what you expect Kiip to do - if a user deserves a reward, they see this:

We completely redesigned the look and feel of Kiip, while putting a large effort into optimizing for performance. It will feel faster than ever.

Note: You’ll see these changes without upgrading, but you should still upgrade.

The Transition Plan

We’ll be releasing a deprecation schedule within the next few weeks, but we urge you to move over to the new API and SDK as soon as possible. If you have feedback, as always, please email us at support@kiip.me and Nick or Jack will help you out.

Learning More, What to do Next

If you’re curious about the new system, take a browse through the glossary, a comprehensive list of all the new terms and how to use them.

Hello Kiipers!

Big news to start off: we just crossed our own moment of achievement – Kiip is now in more than 500 games and apps! (More than 550, actually.) We have tracked more than 120 million moments and are now serving six Kiip rewards a second, rewarding the world in greater numbers than ever before.

iOS6’ers rejoice! You can now send your Kiip reward coupons directly to Passbook with the touch of a button. It’s another step we’ve taken to ensure the redemption process is as easy as possible for users – TechCrunch said we are the perfect company to show off the potential of Passbook . They also featured Courtney Guertin, my fellow co-founder and CTO, in an “In the Studio” interview about his career and Midwestern work ethic. Definitely worth a watch.

Developers make sure to check my Q&A with Verizon Developer Community to see why the Kiip SDK is the gift that kiips on giving. Be on the lookout for new research that shows why integrating Kiip is a no-brainer for developers.

Have you seen our infographic about the science of happiness? I love it – you can discover the peak happiness hours in a day, which states are the most serendipitous and much more. One of my favorite books, Delivering Happiness (partially what inspired that infographic) featured it on their blog a few weeks back.

As for events – this week I’ll be in Austin for the iMedia Breakthrough Summit alongside our East Coast Director of Brand Partnerships Eric Shoicket. I’ll be paneling about the “Connected Consumer”, talking about how with a multitude of internet-enabled devices, the device actually fades away in the context of advertising.

I’ll then be keynoting at the DWS (Dublin Web Summit) later in the week on the topic of Humanizing Advertising. After this I’ll be representing at GroupM’s What’s Next Conference . I’ll be at a fireside chat in the afternoon.

Be sure to catch Eric Shoicket, Chris Kobran (our VP Sales), and me at FutureM in Boston on October 24th, speaking about how happiness moments are changing the world of mobile marketing. We’re also hosting a VIP reception there. Please respond to this e-mail if you’re planning to be in the Boston area that week. We’re sending out rolling invites in the coming days. Whether it be in Austin, Dublin, New York, or Boston – hoping to catch you in the coming weeks!

Without further ado, here are our favorite links from the past few weeks:

1. A recent article in The New York Times tackled smartphone ads and their drawbacks. With two inches of width and one-third of an inch of height to work with, it argues display ads aren’t much of a canvas for creative marketers to promote their product. There seemed to be lots of frustration among those interviewed, including one ad agency exec who tells her firm’s clients “not to bother advertising on smartphones.” This is not a sound strategy considering the seismic shift that is underway with smartphones, but we understand that it’s clear banner ads are not working for advertisers. At first glance, the screen size is always the easiest to blame. We looked at it a different way; this is why we completely re-designed the delivery mechanism for brand engagement with rewards and reciprocity. Through the reward – there is an engagement that involves the consumer choosing to redeem, along with the transactional element, and the impact of the brand being there in the moment. Our platform is evidence that screen size is not an impediment, but a gateway to creating meaningful connections with mobile consumers.

2. In related news, nearly half (47%) of major brands are dissatisfied with the progress of their mobile marketing efforts. They might want to take note of new research that indicates mobile requires a deeper look into motives, moods and modes to effectively capture the attention of mobile consumers. It’s what we’ve been saying since we started – moments over impressions. Where and when you reach your audience is just as important as what you’re offering them.

3. A survey found that only one in five phone users remember mobile ads. And of those few that remember, more than half of them couldn’t recall which brands, products or services were being promoted in the ads they’d seen. The message is not getting through with these platforms, but we’ve found that people love (and remember) the brands that reward and thank them. Reaching users in a moment of happiness – as opposed to a random moment – does a lot for brand recall.

4. A study conducted at the University of Missouri-Kansas City revealed that children’s brains are found to light up at the sight of fast-food logos. It suggests fast-food firms are tapping into the reward areas of the brain and that advertising is having a pronounced effect on children’s eating habits. In fact, children who tasted two identical burgers, one in a plain box and one with the famous golden arches, preferred the latter. Branding 101, eh? We’re also stoked to finally have McDonald’s on board as a brand partner. We’ve had a lot of traction in the QSR space with brands like White Castle, Carl’s Jr., and now McDonald’s.

5. Facebook has finally figured out how to monetize mobile – they just announced that gifts can now be purchased as an additional way to celebrate the birthdays and congratulations that populate news feeds. You can send your friends anything from cupcakes to stuffed animals to Starbucks gift cards. We’ve found the joy of sharing a reward is almost as satisfying as earning one for yourself – this move definitely taps into that behavior. Facebook is capitalizing on existing behavior patterns – and we’re helping do the same in any moment engaged on a mobile device. Social moments are one part of it – imagine everything else that happens on the smartphone.

6. A million new activated devices every day isn’t cool, you know what’s cool? A billion total activated devices. Google says 1.3 million new Android devices are being activated daily and having just crossed 500 million total Android activated devices , could hit 1 billion total activated devices by 2013. Be sure to get the Kiip app on Google Play!

7. More Google news – they conducted their own study into the behavior of PC, smartphone and TV users , and found that 90% of participants used multiple devices sequentially and 81% used multiple devices simultaneously. In both cases, the smartphone was at the heart of these multi-device behaviors. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

8. Speaking of simultaneous smartphone usage (here’s an awesome one), a study says that 33% of mobile phone owners would pick up calls during sex. According to the report, “mobile phones continue to infiltrate some of our most intimate moments.” At Marketing’s Mobile Conference in Toronto last month, I said that as the mobile device “becomes more and more intimate; it becomes closer to essentially our bodies” – I see some people may have took that literally ;).

9. Ad Age wrote about Digital Labs, PepsiCo’s great program that works with young companies to further its beverage brands in the digital market. Kiip was listed as one of the “startup stars” working with Pepsi, and our own Chris Kobran has some great quotes about the amazing access we get from such a blue-chip client. Together with Pepsi, we’ve seen huge success in rewarding users who log their fitness achievements in MapMyRUN and Nexercise with a complimentary Propel Zero Water. 10% of Pepsi’s digital-media budget is invested with startups – they grasp the importance of having a mobile strategy and we’d love to see more big brands do what they’re doing.

Thanks again for all your continued, awesome support. p.s. a little fun tidbit. A very creative job candidate for Kiip put together a hell of a resume. Check it out. I think he may have raised the bar just a little bit =)

Thanks for reading!

Brian Wong, CEO

Hello Kiipers!

Konichiwa Kiipers!

As you can tell, we have some big news out of Japan – we just revealed Digital Garage as an investor in our recent $11 million round in July. They have helped launch Twitter and LinkedIn in Japan’s lucrative digital market, and this partnership will help us do the same with Kiip rewards. Be on the lookout – we plan to launch in 2013!

More overseas news in case you missed it: we landed Kiip’s first UK brand partner, YO! Sushi, a cool sushi chain where food is delivered via conveyor belt. Now Londoners can get a free sushi plate for their mobile milestones. Read about it on The Drum, who also says Kiip is turning online advertising on its head.

Our mobile rewards platform continues to receive validation from the developer and advertising community. SmarterApps, an Australian mobile game and app builder, gave Kiip an unsolicited glowing review, labeling us a “game changer” that could become a “major player” in the apps industry because of the evolution in revenue production for apps. And at Amazon’s Kindle extravaganza this week they introduced in-app offers, bringing real-world goods within apps and games. (Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? ;) I talked about how it is a huge validation for our market and what we’ve created in a Q&A with TechCrunch.

There was a lot about Kiip on the airwaves these past few months as well:

• We were on The Street and CNBC .

• Canadian Business told its readers to kiip their eyes on our mobile startup.

• I also had an opportunity to author a guest post on Upstart Business Journal about three ways to turn youth into a business advantage.

• I was also super honored to be selected as one of the “30 Most Creative People in Advertising Under 30” by Business Insider.

This past week I gave a keynote at Marketing’s Mobile Conference in Toronto about the need for humanization in mobile marketing in order to connect with consumers on an emotional level. My fellow co-founder Courtney Guertin also spoke at the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab about how going personal is the next big step in gamification.

Another update for those who have been seeing the Passbook adoption over the past few days. It looks like over 100 million devices are now Passbook enabled. As such, we’ve been working hard at Kiip to integrate passbook into our offerings.

Finally, be on the lookout for a big announcement in the coming weeks about some partners that will help take Kiip to another level in redemption and rewards.

Without further ado, here are our favorite links from the past few weeks:

1. The U.S. is poised to lead global mobile ad spending in 2013, a figure more impressive when you consider Asia’s strong telecommunications mobile infrastructure. Advertisers worldwide are beginning to focus on mobile – spending shot up 150% on mobile ad display prices during the London Olympics. The uptick in smartphone use continues to propel the amount marketers spend in mobile advertising, so you can expect Kiip’s impressive résumé of brand partners to grow as more advertisers embrace the power of mobile.

2. Pew research came out with some interesting stats about the proliferation and effectives of mobile devices: mobile internet usage will pass desktop internet usage in two years, over 1 billion of the world’s 4+ billion mobile devices are smartphones and 53% of Americans use a smartphone. Our favorite, however, was that mobile ads are four to five times more effective than online ads. And Kiip rewards are something like a bagillion times more effective ;)

3. According to the Mobile Marketing Association, 7% of current ad budgets should be spent on mobile. Currently, only 1% of U.S. ad dollars are directed to mobile, despite the fact that we spend about 10% of our time on these devices. Kiip is primed to be on the forefront of this market that is set to explode.

4. Digiday wondered if activity-based mobile ads will take off and asked three top agency executives for their opinions. They noted activity-based ad impressions highlight the opportunity afforded by the natural break, the importance of momentary engagement for consumers and the benefit of catching consumers in the mindset to interact. In short: yes. And we’re genuinely rewarding this activity.

5. Harvard Business Review proclaimed traditional marketing dead in a recent blog post, but noted the new possibilities of peer influence-based, community-oriented marketing hold much greater promise for creating sustained growth through authentic customer relationships. We see this happening in mobile – traditional methods like banner ads are just not working, and only by re-designing and re-imagining the interface and interaction of mobile ads and engagement (rewards and reciprocity) will monetization occur.

6. One of the few things the ’90s had going for it was click-through-rates, which were as high as 3% during the dot-com era. In late August, Facebook unveiled ads that run alongside searches called Sponsored Results and the company is reporting that some CTRs are exceeding 3%, which is 23 times higher than their regular marketplace ads. By comparison, today typical CTRs average 0.1%-0.3%. It’s only been a month so sustainability remains a big question, but it looks like Facebook is taking steps toward solving its monetization problem. At Kiip, we see CTR’s average between 8-10%. It’s quite amazing what the achievement moment has been able to uncover around hyper-engagement with brands.

7. Retailers are jumping on the mobile bandwagon. Walgreen is launching a mobile rewards program and Walmart is testing a new mobile payment system that will allow shoppers to use their iPhone to scan their purchases while shopping rather than having them scanned at a checkout register. They want you to not only save money, but time as well.

8. Amazon just launched its first social game, Living Classic, and unveiled its own game studio. It’s a move that capitalizes on Zynga’s current vulnerability, and also lets Amazon become a first-party publisher of games for its Kindle tablets.

9. Ever wanted to be Indiana Jones? Geocaching, a cool new iPhone app by Groundspeak, lets you do just that. The app turns the world into a real-life treasure hunt by making use of a GPS device to find containers hidden outdoors. There’s over 1 million geocaches hidden around the world, which can be anything from a logbook to sign or a collection of knick-knacks to add to and take from. We’re big fans of its serendipitous platform, which mirrors the surprise and delight that Kiip rewards bring.

10. The potential of advertising in the $3 billion (forecasted to reach $7.2 billion in 2016) video games market is massive, and Cory Oslin thinks Kiip is “the wild card…thinking outside the box when it comes to gaming and advertising.”

So much more to come this year. We’re super excited. Oh and p.s. this one is truly Kiip Up #22 - the last one was numbered wrong at #20.

Thanks for reading!

Brian Wong, CEO