Stow the S&H Green Stamps, grandpa: According to research from Offerpal Media, the newest desired reward points are in-game currency from online diversions such as Mafia Wars, Social City and Farmville.
Granted, Offerpal isn’t exactly a disinterested bystander in this. The company specializes in setting up programs that offer online game, virtual world and social network currencies in return for consumers engaging with advertisers. In a typical Offerpal program, game players are rewarded for shopping, completing online surveys, watching videos or otherwise engaging with brands.
According to Offerpal, 53.3% of those surveyed would be “very likely” to interact with a marketer, fill out a survey, view a video, complete a survey or take other actions in return for points or credits to a variety of social network games. In comparison, only 22.8% would be willing and are able to buy the points using cash payments.
Offerpal’s survey also found 29.7% of social gamers do not have the ability or the means to pay for virtual currency with cash options. Even among those who do, 34.9% are “very unlikely” to part with their money to do so.
The preferred marketing actions players would do to receive poinst are, in order completing a free survey, watching a video, completing tasks such as tagging a photo or proofreading a document, shopping for clothes or other goods online, subscribing to a magazine and subscribing to a movie rental program, Offerpal found.
Other findings from the report include:
Gamers in the 25-34 age range are most likely (70.9 % “very likely”) to be willing to earn virtual currency through marketing actions;
Most of the gamers (54.5%) report playing games online at least once a day; 26.7% reported playing several times a week; 11.5% play about once a week; and 7.3% play two to three times a month;
Of those who say they are “very likely” to buy points with a cash payment method, a majority are men (53.4%) and a plurality are in the 25-34 age range (42.8%); 85.4% of the users who say they are “very likely” to buy points with cash are also “very likely” to earn points through marketing actions.
The study was conducted between Feb. 12 and Feb. 15 among 799 comScore panelists. Respondents were filtered to only include users who play games on the leading social network at least once a month.
