It’s time for our ‘’Featured Publisher'’ for the month of August.

The ‘’Featured Publisher'’ for August is Mehul Patel, President of Swirve.com. With its selection of online, multi-player, interactive games–really the first of its kind when they debuted in 96′–the website is a living legend. Swirve.com survived the boom/bust period of 2000 and is still taking ground in the new world of Web 2.0. I interviewed Mehul earlier this month via email.

Vince Panero (RMX Direct): Hi Mehul. Thanks for doing the interview. First off, how did you get interested in web publishing?

Mehul Patel: The Swirve website started (under a different name) back in 1996 as an experiment to see if it was possible to create an interactive game that could be played on the web. It was a hobby at the time and grew from there. At the time, I wasn’t sure what to expect as I had never done web design, let alone web programming, but everything went smoothly and we were able to grow early on and it just kind of snowballed from there.

VP: Can you tell us about your website?

MP: Sure – Swirve.com is basically an interactive gaming website. We have two major games, Earth: 2025 and Utopia, and both have been around for 8-10 years now. They are free to play and completely ad-supported, and are the longest running web games of their kind. They’ve won a couple of Webby Awards and allow players from all over the world to interact in a team-oriented, social gaming atmosphere. We also have some other secondary services like Fantasy Sports and E-Cards, but those are not major parts of the site.

VP: What has your experience been so far as it relates to monetizing a Flash games/MMOSG-focused website?

MP: Monetizing a gaming site has its challenges. We had hoped that brand advertising would have picked up more on the web, but that seems limited to the mega-sites like ESPN for now. With a site that has a strong content-focus and repeat traffic, branding is our specialty. Certainly there are advantages as well, but that is one of the major frustrations we’ve run into many times over the years.

VP: Being primarily games, how did your partnership with the e-card website occur?

MP: Swirve, while it is a business, is run more like a hobby. Both the e-cards and the fantasy sports sites were designed as challenges– simply because they interested us. The challenge of creating new services is a driving force behind our development, and we felt we wanted to try offering those things. There was no real rhyme or reason behind it, though.

VP: That’s a fascinating mash-up of services—games and e-cards. How has the games and e-cards combination worked for you and your users?

MP: They’ve been a good fit for us as a company in trying to attract a diverse audience, but there’s not a lot of crossover traffic. The two audiences are vastly different, so they are almost treated as completely different sites right now. We’d like to integrate them better, but our focus has always been primarily on the games side, with the other features being secondary services.

VP: Why did you start using RMX Direct as your network management system of choice?

MP: We work with a number of different ad partners, and trying to best distribute our ads between all of those partners has been an enormous challenge. Having a system that can find the best fit for a given ad impression is great for us, as it reduces the tedious work of constantly monitoring each network and adjusting inventory to each. We’ve been following its development for a few months now and we were very excited when the Beta test started.

VP: What statistical changes have you seen since you started using RMX? For example, have your eCPM and revenue increased?

MP: We only use it for a limited portion of our inventory so far, but we’ve noticed great results in eCPM. We work with a number of Yield Manager networks, and each sells bits and pieces, but it was hard with some being better for certain countries and rates fluctuating and such. Now, we have far less wasted inventory as it all gets allocated to its best fit. Over time, as RMX brings in more networks, we hope to convert more and more of our inventory to the RMX system.

VP: What do you like most about RMX Direct? Are there helpful parts of it that other ad management interfaces simply don’t offer?

MP: The most unique thing, for me, is the reporting system. It is extremely easy to use to get very useful information. Many of the other networks have clumsy reporting that gets us totals, but isn’t good for analysis. With RMX, being able to quickly see distributions by country and advertiser make it far easier to watch what is or isn’t selling well and adjust our inventory to better account for that. This allows us to best maximize the value of our ad impressions.

VP: Do you have an ad placement technique? If it’s not ‘’TOP SECRET'’, what is it?

MP: We have nothing in particular – we mix in a variety of ad sizes where we feel they best fit, but there is nothing unique on our end. We do manually balance the ads between our various ad companies to try to distribute our inventory as optimally as possible. We find that the traditional methods – chaining networks and frequency capping – are woefully inefficient to maximizing revenue.

VP: And while we’re asking, do you have any other tips and tricks that you think others using the exchange might find useful?

MP: Content is king – always focus on developing quality, unique content, and the revenues will take care of themselves. I think many web developers simply focus on duplicating something else on the web instead of trying to come up with something unique and different.

VP: Do you have any final thoughts on this ‘’exchange concept'’ (network transparency and competition, the fun of having just one login, etc.)?

MP: I think the information you guys provide to the publishers is phenomenal. So many networks seem to treat publishers as a necessary evil and try to keep them as far out of the loop as possible. With RMX Direct, it’s nice to have a network that makes publisher services and features a top priority. It’s very refreshing in the current ad environment.

VP: Thanks for being a part of RMX Direct, Mehul.

Watch for more ‘’Featured Publisher'’ articles in the near future posted simultaneoulsy in the RMX Direct Forum and in our RMX Direct Blog. It’s a great way to get an inside look at how web publishers become successful and stay that way. And feel free to drop in to Mehul’s site, www.Swirve.com, and play a game…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 at 8:29 pm and is filed under Direct Media Exchange. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.