TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Bold tech & web commentary

TechFold is technology discussion, commentary, reviews, and opinions from well outside the valley. There's no koolaid to drink here, and TechFold is not in SL, or on Twitter.

Congratulations to Mochi!

I ripped into MochiAds a few weeks ago in my post entitled “I hate Zwinky’s” (I really do) - to which I received a very nice reply from Jameson Hsu of Mochi, followed by some email back & forth. Well, it looks like Jameson has had a busy few weeks, with Mashable announcing that big name VC’s Accel Partners (also funded Facebook, among others) have stepped up to get Mochi growing.

The amount involved isn’t mentioned, but any endorsement by Accel lends credibility to the concept and timeliness of casual gaming as an advertising vector.

Congrats to Jameson and the Mochi team!

-R

accel, funding, mochi mochiads

I hate Zwinky’s

…because I’m clearly not in the target demographic. Every time I load Desktop Tower Defense (DTD), I have told “MochiAds” (the in-game ad company that apparently sells DTD inventory) just as much by choosing 1/5 under “Rate this Ad.” And yet, 97% of the time I go to DTD, I get one of the same three stupid Zwinky ads.

So - is the “rate this ad” feature a sham designed to increase ad-memorability by driving a response? Or is MochiAds incapable of selling anything other than Zwinky ad units? Whatever the case, why are they wasting an opportunity to improve the ads served and increase the likelihood of a clickthrough? If I were an advertiser, I’d be annoyed. If I were the DTD people, I’d be annoyed. As a game player, I’m annoyed. Basically, MochiAds seems to be underserving everyone in the value chain here.

And, I know they could improve. MochiAds plants a browser cookie (look for “Mochibot”) that lists my “mochiGUID” - which FYI is “e421d88403a601f70149a530d06c1229.” So - they know who I am and how I’ve rated each ad I’ve seen. So why doesn’t Mochi try to provide me with ads that I do like?

Then again, Google’s vaunted AdSense can’t serve ads for DTD worth a damn either. HandDrawnGames is really missing out.