4 ms·

How Zynga is doing 100 MM in revenue and how we can help you do it

40 points by suhail 17y ago

there 17y ago
who?
- mgrouchy 17y ago
  With some googling it appears that Zynga is a social games network(based on open social). No link or anything in the article(and I had never heard of it before).
  - wayne 17y ago
    They also make a bunch of popular Facebook apps like Mafia Wars and Vampires.
    - mgrouchy 17y ago
      Those are games(albeit annoying ones) I do recognize. That million dollars in ad revenue they spent on myspace ads paid off!
robotron 17y ago
or "Use Our Analytics Tool To Make Billions!"
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- imp 17y ago
  Yeah, I don't like mixpanel's attitude. It's like they don't even acknowledge other analytics packages and act like they're the only one that can do a funnel analysis. I don't see what their differentiation is.
  - trefn 17y ago
    We do a few things differently than everyone else: 1. Event based tracking: the steps of your funnel don't have to be page views; you can easily track user interactions (songs played, links upvoted, etc) as funnel steps. 2. Dead simple segmentation: any additional data you send us about the funnel step can be used to segment. If you know the user's gender, the ad campaign they came from, or anything else we can give specific conversion rates based on that segmentation. 3. Easily create funnels on the fly: Each step of the funnel is tracked with one line of code. When you want to make a new funnel, you just start sending us data with a new funnel name. We didn't mean to come across as having an attitude - sorry if it felt that way.
jacquesm 17y ago
"Rumors are going around of Zynga supposedly doing something around 100MM in revenue this year--that's huge. Whether or not the rumor is entirely true is beside the point - something is definitely going on." It's a rumor, not a fact and that makes a big difference to me. Also, what is a MM ?
- mblakele 17y ago
  MM = mille mille = thousand thousand = 10^6, with roots in finance culture. I prefer M = mega = 10^6, as in SI units.
  - sho 17y ago
    Also used in advertising - CPM, Cost Per Mille, ie. cost per thousand views.
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  If it's wrong, it's not far off. I run some Facebook RPGs. I did an estimate using their user numbers (not hard find since the networks publish them) and assuming similar revenue per user (RPU) to our games and guesstimated $75m. Their games probably also have higher RPU than ours, so I could totally see $100m or even significantly more now that FarmVille is taking off. On the other hand, as MixPanel pointed out, they buy a LOT of traffic. Not just on Myspace either. On both networks you can build a compelling enough game to get your RPU above the cost of buying a user. The difference between the two is that on Facebook, your app can succeed without that. Zynga's spending what has to be at least $2m/mo in ads, maybe 3 or 4. They're also using ads on their games to cross promote with other games, and those ads could be bringing in money too. When you factor that in, as high as 50% of their revenue could be going right out the door to advertising. (I don't think that's the case though, if I had to venture a guess I'd say 20-25%).
  - blader 17y ago
    They also have 300+ FTEs in addition to 200+ contractors.
- 17y ago
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

40 points by suhail 17y ago

there 17y ago

who?

mgrouchy 17y ago
With some googling it appears that Zynga is a social games network(based on open social). No link or anything in the article(and I had never heard of it before).
- wayne 17y ago
  They also make a bunch of popular Facebook apps like Mafia Wars and Vampires.
  - mgrouchy 17y ago
    Those are games(albeit annoying ones) I do recognize. That million dollars in ad revenue they spent on myspace ads paid off!

robotron 17y ago

or "Use Our Analytics Tool To Make Billions!"

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
imp 17y ago
Yeah, I don't like mixpanel's attitude. It's like they don't even acknowledge other analytics packages and act like they're the only one that can do a funnel analysis. I don't see what their differentiation is.
- trefn 17y ago
  We do a few things differently than everyone else: 1. Event based tracking: the steps of your funnel don't have to be page views; you can easily track user interactions (songs played, links upvoted, etc) as funnel steps. 2. Dead simple segmentation: any additional data you send us about the funnel step can be used to segment. If you know the user's gender, the ad campaign they came from, or anything else we can give specific conversion rates based on that segmentation. 3. Easily create funnels on the fly: Each step of the funnel is tracked with one line of code. When you want to make a new funnel, you just start sending us data with a new funnel name. We didn't mean to come across as having an attitude - sorry if it felt that way.

jacquesm 17y ago

"Rumors are going around of Zynga supposedly doing something around 100MM in revenue this year--that's huge. Whether or not the rumor is entirely true is beside the point - something is definitely going on." It's a rumor, not a fact and that makes a big difference to me. Also, what is a MM ?

mblakele 17y ago
MM = mille mille = thousand thousand = 10^6, with roots in finance culture. I prefer M = mega = 10^6, as in SI units.
- sho 17y ago
  Also used in advertising - CPM, Cost Per Mille, ie. cost per thousand views.
mattmaroon 17y ago
If it's wrong, it's not far off. I run some Facebook RPGs. I did an estimate using their user numbers (not hard find since the networks publish them) and assuming similar revenue per user (RPU) to our games and guesstimated $75m. Their games probably also have higher RPU than ours, so I could totally see $100m or even significantly more now that FarmVille is taking off. On the other hand, as MixPanel pointed out, they buy a LOT of traffic. Not just on Myspace either. On both networks you can build a compelling enough game to get your RPU above the cost of buying a user. The difference between the two is that on Facebook, your app can succeed without that. Zynga's spending what has to be at least $2m/mo in ads, maybe 3 or 4. They're also using ads on their games to cross promote with other games, and those ads could be bringing in money too. When you factor that in, as high as 50% of their revenue could be going right out the door to advertising. (I don't think that's the case though, if I had to venture a guess I'd say 20-25%).
- blader 17y ago
  They also have 300+ FTEs in addition to 200+ contractors.
17y ago

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]