• Where: Irvine
• 12-month sales: $73.1 million
• Two-year growth: 987%
• OC workers: 26
• Business: advertising sales on casual gaming websites
Irvine-based Future Ads LLC has grown its business by getting advertisers in front of young guys and soccer moms looking to pass time playing casual games on the computer.
The company runs two casual gaming websites, Gamevance.com and PlaySushi. com. Both attract 12 million or so visitors a month.
“Online gaming has grown a lot in the last couple years,” said Jared Pobre, cofounder and chief executive of Future Ads, which lists Sony Corp.’s Sony Pictures Digital Inc., Lowe’s Cos., Experian Group Ltd., Electronic Arts Inc. and Konami Corp. among the company’s advertisers.
Some 20% of Amer-icans report having played a game on a social networking website in the past three months, according to a recent report from Port Washington, N.Y.-based market researcher NPD Group Inc. About 35% of social network game players are new to computer games.
“We have been able to piggyback a lot of our growth,” Pobre said.
Future Ads ranked No. 4 on the Business Journal’s 2010 list of fast-growing private companies with sales growth of 987% for the two years through June 30.
For the 12 months through June, Future Ads had sales of $73.1 million, up from $6.7 million for the same period in 2008. The company has 26 employees.
Future Ads started early this decade as an interactive advertising agency building websites for companies and buying and selling digital ads.
The switch to casual games came in 2005 after Pobre went to the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, the game industry’s biggest trade show.
“I was standing on a three-story booth from Xbox that cost several million dollars to build, amongst other million- dollar booths,” he said. “I decided this is a business I want to be in.”
Early on, Pobre worked for Irvine’s Local.com Corp., which hosts two websites that help users search for local businesses. He was a director of business development before leaving for an Internet startup. That one failed, and he went on to another that shut down in 2001 after failing to raise a second round of funding.
“I had two options: get a job or start a new company, so I did a little of both,” Pobre said.
Pobre went to work as a senior media buyer for Irvine-based Autobytel Inc., an automotive Internet marketing company. He started Future Ads on the side with a $500 investment.
“I worked for Autobytel and quit after 90 days to focus on my business,” Pobre said.
Future Ads’ Gamevance.com site has been a draw for women, offering old-school, low-key games such as “Donkey Kong” and “Space Invaders.”
“These are women who go online and read blogs, and when they are done they play these casual games for 15 to 20 minutes at sporadic times throughout the day,” Pobre said.
Gamevance.com gets about 12 million visitors a month, many of them younger women and soccer moms.
Soccer moms are prized by advertisers, Pobre said.
“They are very responsive to the offers that are presented to them,” Pobre said.
Future Ads at first came up with all of its casual games itself, with one game developer on staff producing about a game a week.
“It’s much easier to produce a casual game than a hardcore game like ‘World of Warcraft,’” Pobre said, referring to Irvine-based Blizzard Entertainment Inc.’s blockbuster online game.
Future Ads now works with Germany’s Bigpoint GMBH, a developer of casual games.
Game developers get a cut of advertising revenue from Future Ads’ sites.
The company launched PlaySushi.com last year looking to appeal to young guys, another coveted demographic by advertisers.
“PlaySushi has grown tremendously in the past year,” Pobre said.
The advertising market for casual games is expected to grow from an estimated $280 million in 2008 to about $1 billion in 2011, accordinag to San Diego-based DFC Intelligence, a video game market research company.
“Casual and social gaming have fueled the business in terms of revenue,” Pobre said. “But more and more money is pouring into online advertising because it’s measurable.”
Future Ads’ rivals include some of the biggest names in technology, including Microsoft Corp., RealNetworks Inc. and Electronic Arts, which has amassed more than a million subscribers to Pogo.com, its online casual game service. But the rivalries leave room for cross-promotion.
“We’ve actually started working with our rivals to expand the user base,” Pobre said. “We are actually Pogo’s primary media buy.”
Display advertising for online games was up about 30% last year as clients pulled back on traditional media to target the Internet, according to Pobre.
“Casual gaming is kind of counter-cyclical,” he said. “More people are going online and using casual gaming as entertainment.”
Future Ads could be a possible acquisition target for larger companies looking to get into casual games.
“We have been contacted,” Pobre said. “If something happens down the line, we’ll entertain conversations. But our goal is to continue to grow.”
