Let’s face it: We’re all on our phones more often than we’d like to admit. A company that has fully embraced this fact is Gamewheel, a new advertising tool that allows businesses to use mobile games as a way to promote their products. Gamewheel takes advertising to the next level, with the interactive game ad being “the next step after video ad.”
Co-founder Evgeni Kouris, a WeWork member based in both Berlin office spaces, gives us some behind the scenes information about the rapidly growing company.
Where did the idea for Gamewheel come from?
I’m an artist and entrepreneur. I’ve been doing music all my life. I have released three albums with my band Timid Tiger. In order to create music these days, you need a lot of synthesizers, tools, and computer technology. I’ve studied computer science and coded all my life, thus I got really passionate about innovative technology.
I realized how difficult it is to introduce and explain all these new tools to kids. Then I met my co-founder Christian, who has three kids and produced over 100 games in his career. We agreed that in the future, communication will be driven by two trends: gamification (applying games to the real world) and mixed reality (when augmented reality merges with the real world). Thus, we have created the first successful AR game for children—Toy Car RC—and built an AR game studio: Toywheel.
The game reached number one in over 30 countries. We received lots of attention from brands and agencies who were interested in using AR/VR technology for their mobile marketing. This is how Gamewheel’s B2B platform addressing the needs of brands and marketers was born.
How much time do you think people spend on their phones, and how would having gamified ads help them while they wait for their program to load?
Today, mobile is the main device people spend time with during the day. They have their device with them for about 22 hours a day. Games are the main medium people spend time on mobile with. Mobile games’ penetration is over 75 percent, and it’s even over 90 percent for younger audiences. Mobile gamers spend over two hours a day playing games, and this number has grown from 2012 to 2015 by 57 percent.
How do you find WeWork helps and supports you?
We love to support startups, artists, and entrepreneurs. This is why we joined the WeWork community. In fact, a few WeWork companies became our customers already, and we’re very excited to expand our global customer base also through the WeWork network. On our platform, small companies with little budgets could market like really big ones. Our platform is fully free for creation of gamified ads, so there is no risk upfront to be taken. In addition, we support the WeWork community with special discounts and exclusive premium support.
I first visited one of the WeWork offices in New York in 2014, and I was amazed by the design and atmosphere. As an artist, I feel that it’s very important to have the right space to work with globally. WeWork allows us as a small, but fast-growing startup not only to easily expand to any other city in the world, but also to act like a grown-up company.