Kiip was a mobile

advertising network An online advertising network or ad network is a company that connects advertisers to websites that want to host advertisements. The key function of an ad network is an aggregation of ad supply from publishers and matching it with advertiser's d ...

.Edwards, Jim
This 21-year-old May Have Cracked the Future of Mobile Advertising
''BusinessInsider''. May 21, 2012. Holiday, Ryan
Online Advertisings Greatest Missed Opportunity? Kiip.Me Founder Brian Wong Answers
''Forbes''. April 25, 2012. It was co-founded by

Brian Wong Brian Wong (born April 14, 1991) is a Canadian Internet entrepreneur. In 2010, Wong co-founded Kiip (pronounced "keep"), a company offering a mobile app rewards platform through which computer game players would receive real-world rewards from ...

, Courtney Guertin, and Amadeus Demarzi in 2010. Kiip provided users with tangible rewards, such as a bottle of water for every eight miles run by a user in a game. Kiip's rewards platforms was designed for in-app engagement.Valentino-Devries, Jennife
New Approach to Ads in Games
''Wall Street Journal''. June 24, 2011.

History

Wong, at 19, developed the idea for Kiip on an airplane, when he observed its passengers on their

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...

s.Tsotsi, Alexia
Kiip’s Brian Wong On Taking Risks As Young Entrepreneur
''TechCrunch''. April 12, 2011.Newman, Kira
Brian Wong to Young Entrepreneurs: “Assume no one gives a shit about you”
. ''Tech Cocktail''. April 18, 2012. Many passengers were playing games, where the games' advertisements took up screen space that couldn't be used by the game itself. Wong hypothesized that instead, games could leverage moments of achievement—such as level ups and high scores—with a rewards program where advertisers could make consumer offers.Rose, Kevin
Foundation 05 // Brian Wong
''Foundation''. April 2011. In July 2010, Wong teamed with Courtney Guertin and Amadeus Demarzi to found the company,Tsotsis, Alexia
19 Year Old Kiip Founder Closes 300K Angel Round For Mobile In-Game Ad Startup
''Tech Crunch’''. October 27, 2010. and raised $300,000 in seed capital from True Ventures, Vast Ventures, Paige Craig, Rohan Oza, Keith Belling, Joe Stump, and Chris Redlitz.McMahan, Ty
Betting Venture Capital On An Unproven 19-Year-Old
''Wall Street Journal''. August 6, 2010. In subsequent A and B rounds, Kiip had raised a total of $15.4 million from investors including Relay Ventures,

Hummer Winblad Venture Partners Hummer Winblad Venture Partners is an American software and web focused venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California. Its founders include John Hummer and Ann Winblad. The firm was an early investor in Napster, the first popular file ...

, Interpublic Group, American Express Ventures, Digital Garage, Crosslink Capital, True Ventures, Venture51, Transmedia Capital, and Verizon Ventures. In 2016 they received a Series C round of $12 million, for a total of $32 million. In October 2017, Kiip expanded its mobile rewards platform to Amazon’s Fire TV.

Platform

The company said Kiip had about 75 million users per month across about 400 apps by 2013. The company had offices in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

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Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, Vancouver,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, Bogota, and

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

.Ryan, Tim
Brands Rewards Your Fitness Achievements With Useful Products.
''PSFK''. April 14, 2012. Apps using Kiip include games and

fitness app A fitness app is an application that can be downloaded on any mobile device and used anywhere to get fit. As of 2015, the number of health-related apps released on the two leading platforms, iPhone operating system (iOS) and Android, had reached ...

sTakahashi, Dean
Kiip expands beyond games to rewarding fitness 'moments'
''Venture Beat''. March 22, 2012. such as RunKeeper. The company had also integrated its system with productivity apps, such as Any.do and Finish 2.0. Kiip is also integrated with the Yahoo! Japan app, which was the first time Yahoo! Japan has integrated a third-party service into its app. Clients included 7-Eleven, Amazon, American Apparel, Campbell's, Ford, Hasbro, Macy's, McDonald's, Mondelēz International (formerly Kraft Foods), Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Sony Music, Unilever, Verizon and Wrigley. The company's platform offered real-world rewards to mobile users. It used developer tool software called Kiip Neon. In 2014, Kiip formed a strategic partnership with IPG to release a mobile usage study.

Recognition

Kiip was listed by ''

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year. History ''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan Web ...

'' as one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the world in 2013 and by ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

'' as one of the "4 Hot Online Ad Companies".Taulli, Tom
4 Hot Online Ad Companies to Put on Your Watch List
''Forbes''. April 14, 2011. Kiip was also named to the Dow Jones' FasTech50 List.

Lawsuit settlement, bankruptcy and acquisition

In July 2019, Kiip agreed to a $1 million settlement of a

class action lawsuit A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class actio ...

claiming that Kiip had violated the law by collecting and using person information about users without permission. Kiip admitted no wrongdoing when agreeing to the financial settlement. On August 26, 2019, Kiip went into foreclosure terminating the majority of its employees with Diablo management group taking over the closure, sale of assets, and liquidation on September 15, 2019. NinthDecimal acquired the assets in bankruptcy court with subsequent details revealed in lawsuit filings in The Meet Group vs Kiip case filed in San Francisco court.{{Cite web, url=https://casetext.com/brief/cgc19580436-the-meet-group-inc-vs-kiip-inc-et-al-defendant-ninthdecimal-inc-s-answer-to-complaint

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

* Official website for class action settlemen
Farag v Kiip Settlement – Home
* {{Official website, http://www.kiip.com{{dead link, date=August 2021 Marketing companies established in 2010 Companies based in San Francisco Digital marketing companies of the United States