Tap.Me is a Chicago based in-game sponsorship/advertising platform and today announced they have raised just over $1M in a Series A round. Tap.Me was one of the first companies to graduate from Chicago’s own Excelerate Labs and has been doing great things since. Funding was led by The Hyde Park Angels, the i2a Fund and David Cohen (Bullet Time Ventures) For those that don’t remember, Flyover Geeks first featured Tap.Me back in September: In-Game Sponsorship The Way Of The (Mobile Advertising) Future. Tap.Me is led by CEO Joshua Hernandez, a passionate advocate of Chicago’s role in games (See him here at Ignite Chicago: “Chicago’s Game Industry Needs A Power Up” “With mobile gaming and in-game advertising expected to grow as more and more people use their smart phones for multi-media entertainment, this seemed like an attractive market. HPA looks very closely at opportunities to get ahead of growing markets with innovative companies such as Tap Me.” said Richard Box, HPA member, and Tap Me board observer. Tap Me was founded as a game development studio and after realizing that in-game ads needed a reboot, they took the task to heart and set out to build a platform that allows brands to add value to games as an alternative to the invasive and interruptive forms of advertising today. It creates new real estate for in-game advertising that does not interrupt game play, fits the context of game design and is truly scalable. “We believe that in-game advertising has yet to show what it is truly capable of in the gaming eco-system. It has been dominated by custom integrations that are hard to scale, game experience breaking display ads or out of context banners. Our goal is to change that with a model that is easy, scalable and effective,” said Josh Hernandez, CEO of Tap Me. “iComplishments allows game developers to tag content to be sponsored by relevant advertisers who will in-turn sponsor the player.” “According to 148apps.com’s metrics, on the Apple App Store alone there are over 325,000 apps of which more than 46,000 are games. Our goal is create a fresh new way to advertise in games that is relevant to the medium,” concludes Hernandez.
