MediaSpike Says Its Network For In-Game Product Placement Now Reaches 20M Unique Users

MediaSpike, a startup that helps mobile and social game developers make money through product placement, is reportedly growing at an impressive clip. The company announced today that its network now reaches 20 million unique users, a 20x increase in less than five months.

Founder Blake Commagere told me last year that he started MediaSpike to address one of the big challenges he faced as a developer of Facebook games – the fact that in-game product placement (like letting an advertiser determine the brand of drinks sold at an in-game bar) was both lucrative and time-consuming.

MediaSpike is supposed to take most of the work out of those placements. Developers create marketplace listings that include audience data, pricing, and the areas of the game where they’re willing to run sponsored content. After that, all the developer has to do is approve or disapprove campaign proposals that come in from advertisers.

I actually spoke to Commagere about the company more than a year ago. So why is growth, er, spiking now? The company attributes it to the recent hiring Joe O’Brien as its new director of strategic partnerships. O’Brien, who previously served as director of business development for appsavvy, has supposedly helped MediaSpike add publishers and games like Tetris Online, Big Blue Bubble, Bigpoint Games, and Meez to its network. (To be clear, the 20 million number reflects size of the publisher network – that’s the potential reach of a campaign, but the actual number of people who have seen or engaged with ads sold through MediaSpike is presumably lower.)

MediaSpike is also announcing that it has hired Calvin Wong as its chief revenue officer. (Wong has worked in sales and operations at Community Connect, appsavvy, IceLounge Media, and SnakBlox.)

And it has added two big names to its advisory board – “Godfather of AdSense” Gokul Rajaram (who helped develop AdSense at Google, served as product director of ads for Facebook, and recently took the lead for product engineering at Square) and Brandon Berger (chief digital officer at ad agency Ogilvy & Mather).