Amazon introduced the Mobile Associates API for Kindle Fire and other Android devices, enabling developers to merchandise millions of physical and digital items from Amazon.com within their apps and games. When using the new API, developers earn up to 6% on qualifying in-app customer purchases while providing customers an opportunity to easily buy and receive goods through Amazon’s secure 1-Click purchase experience and Amazon Prime shipping, where available. Until, if developers wanted to create additional revenue channels for their apps they could use a “freemium” model with digital in-app purchasing or subscriptions, or by using mobile ads. With the Mobile Associates API, developers now have a new way to monetize their apps and games by offering contextually relevant goods across Amazon’s world class physical fulfillment network. The API can be used in the Amazon Appstore and in Google Play, and developers can learn more about integrating the new Mobile Associates API at: https://developer.amazon.com/blog.
Developers now have the ability to create an even deeper connection between their app and the products customers value and purchase through Amazon.com,” said Mike George, Vice President of Amazon Appstore, Games and Cloud Drive. “Imagine a developer of a nutrition and fitness app can now offer their customers the ability to purchase vitamins, supplements and fitness gear within the app, directly from Amazon.com. It offers the customer a more relevant experience and provides the developer with a new source of revenue.
App and game developers as well as existing Amazon Associates can create new and compelling user experiences within apps and games in three ways: selling a single item from within an app or game, showcasing a category of goods, or bundling the purchase of physical goods with the purchase of digital goods (for example, the customer receives a digital version of a board game when they buy the physical one). Animoca, Fismos, Days of Wonder and Spring2Partners are already integrating these experiences within their popular apps and games.
Animoca is a top mobile app developer of titles like Thor: Lord of Storms. “The Mobile Associates API allowed us to build an in-app custom offer wall featuring relevant Amazon goods on the game Thor: Lord of Storms, such as Thor’s popular hammer or action figures,” said Yusuf Goolamabbas , CTO of Animoca. “We can now provide a complete in-app gaming and merchandising experience. Using the API we can give away free virtual items like in-game currency whenever players purchase physical products from our offer wall. This will increase player engagement and help us make money through earning commission for each sale. We are very happy with the ease of integration of this API and applaud Amazon for its innovative combination of real-world commerce and freemium gaming.
Days of Wonder creates popular digital games and physical board games, including titles like Ticket to Ride. “No other company puts as much time and attention into both digital and physical gaming experiences as we do. Over the years, we’ve seen that creating great digital games has always led to increased interest in and additional sales for our physical board games. This new API from Amazon is really the best of all worlds for our company and for fans of Ticket to Ride,” said Eric Hautemont, founder and CEO of Days of Wonder. “Fans are going to love the ability to have a beautifully crafted physical board game shipped directly from Amazon and delivered right to their homes, all with just a tap of 1-Click purchasing without ever leaving their Kindle Fire.
Frismos is a top mobile game developer of titles like Creatures of Olympus. “Amazon offers a huge product selection, enabling you to discover and offer products relevant to your game or app that would appeal to your user base,” said Arsham Manukyan founder of Frismos, Inc. “For our latest title, Creatures of Olympus, we discovered a strong customer tie with our app content and ‘mythology’ products in Amazon’s Toys category. Based on our very encouraging results thus far, we are beginning to understand the value in offering contextually relevant products for our customers. Additionally, through the Digital Bundling feature, we are able to create a truly unique and instantly rewarding customer experience by entitling our users to free virtual currency in the game for the purchase of products through our app.
Spring2Partners is an existing Amazon Associates member and creator of Springpad, a personal assistant app. “Millions of consumers use Springpad’s personal assistant app to save recommendations for products, books and movies as well as to plan bigger projects like home improvement and travel,” said Jacqueline Hampton, Springpad CEO. “The new Amazon Mobile Associates API helps customers buy those products, books and movies on Amazon, directly within the app, enabling seamless in-app transactions for our users when they’re ready to buy.
The Mobile Associates API is an extension of Amazon Associates, the successful web-based affiliate program with millions of affiliates worldwide. Today’s launch is the latest offering in an array of services that make Amazon the most complete end-to-end ecosystem for developers building, monetizing and marketing their apps and games. These capabilities include:
The ability for app developers to use Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) technology platform for their infrastructure needs. Building blocks such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and Amazon DynamoDB allow developers to focus on what differentiates their app rather than the undifferentiated heavy lifting of infrastructure.
GameCircle, which includes capabilities like Achievements, Leaderboards, Friends and Whispersync for syncing games across devices, and leads to better engagement with games.
Login with Amazon, which allows developers to easily reduce sign-in friction for their customers, leading to higher engagement and order conversion.
In-App Purchasing on Kindle Fire, Android, Mac, PC and web-based games. This enables developers to offer their digital items in apps and games while allowing end users to simply use their Amazon accounts to make the purchase.
A/B Testing, which helps developers improve app functionality with the ability to simultaneously test two different in-app experiences to determine which is more successful prior to launching to a broad audience.
Game Connect, which lets developers of PC and Mac games list their virtual goods for sale on Amazon, increasing discoverability of their games and making the purchase of virtual goods as easy and convenient as possible for customers, leading to increased monetization for developers.
Amazon Appstore, which allows developers to distribute their apps and games to millions of Amazon customers in nearly 200 countries.
Mobile Ads, which helps developers monetize their apps by displaying high quality, relevant display ads from brand advertisers, including Amazon.
