Kongregate Secures $3 Million Investment From Bezos Expeditions

Leading Indie Web Games Site Captures High User Engagement of 93 Percent Male Audience; Newly-Appointed Chief Revenue Officer Lee Uniacke to Drive Advertising Partnerships Targeting Men Ages 13-24

Kongregate, a leading indie Web games site featuring over 4,000 cutting-edge games set within an addictive social community, today announced it has secured a $3 million investment from Bezos Expeditions – the personal investment arm of Jeff Bezos, the chairman and founder of Amazon.com.

With this latest capital infusion, Kongregate will continue to scale rapidly, capitalizing on the high engagement of its heavily male audience, 93 percent of which are young men who spend nearly one hour per day on the site. Under the direction of newly-appointed Chief Revenue Officer Lee Uniacke, the company plans to secure high-profile advertising and promotional partnerships based on its tremendous reach and appeal to the target audience – men ages 13-24.

According to comScore’s February findings, users stay on Kongregate an average of 59.3 minutes per day compared to 21 minutes on Facebook and 12.1 minutes on ESPN. Kongregate users play more than four different games per visit and interact within a persistent, highly interactive environment, where they earn rewards and achievements for the games they play. Players are racking-up more than one million achievements per month, and the site attracts over 3 million monthly unique visitors. With a monthly growth rate over 25 percent, Kongregate is on track to reach more than 10 million unique visitors by the end of 2008.

“In a media environment that is defined by constant channel and Web surfing, Kongregate alone captures the ADHD generation and keeps their attention for an hour at a time,” noted Uniacke. “Kongregate’s persistent environment lets users rack-up rewards and achievements that they can display to the community, giving them valuable social currency on the site. Combine that with the edgy and creative Web games that young, talented indie developers upload daily and you’ve got a great site. It’s the ideal online destination for reaching the hard-to-pin-down young male demographic for advertisers like video game companies, movie studios, and auto manufacturers.”

Prior to joining Kongregate, Uniacke was a vice president of sales with Viacom, MTV Networks. During this tenure, he nearly tripled ad revenue over a three-year period for Atom Entertainment, whose signature Web properties include Shockwave.com, AddictingGames.com and AtomFilms.com, among others. He has also served as group publisher for Ziff-Davis Media, which includes 1up.com, Electronic Gaming Monthly and Games for Windows.

Kongregate offers a broad range of more than 4,000 user-submitted Flash and Shockwave games from over 1,500 developers worldwide covering action-adventure, puzzle/strategy, role-playing, sports, and more. The backgrounds of contributing developers on Kongregate are as varied as the games themselves. “Sonny,” the highest-rated game on the site, was produced by Jakrin Juangbhanich, an 18-year-old art school student living in London. The incredibly popular “Desktop Tower Defense,” created by 35-year-old Paul Preece, was named best game of 2007 by MTV, even beating out console titles such as Super Mario Galaxy and Halo 3. Small, independent, full-time game studios such as Pixeljam Games and Hero Interactive also regularly produce and upload high-quality, professional games to the site. Additionally, Kongregate has funded five premium game development projects, which will bring large-scale, exclusive Flash games to the site, including Dinowaurs, Lila Dreams, Zening, Argue About Everything, and Remnants of Skystone. This month, Kongregate also released the Beta version of its premier battle-oriented collectible card game, Kongai, featuring a design by renowned game theory author David Sirlin.

About Kongregate

Kongregate is a leading indie Web games site featuring more than 4,000 user-uploaded games set within an addictive social community. Based in San Francisco, CA, the company was founded in 2006 by brother-and-sister team Jim Greer, a game industry veteran, and Emily Greer, an interactive marketing executive. Kongregate is funded by Greylock Partners; Bezos Expeditions; and leading Web 2.0 angel investors, including Reid Hoffman, a LinkedIn co-founder and social networking pioneer; Joe Kraus, co-founder of Excite and JotSpot; Jeff Clavier; and Richard Wolpert, an early investor in GameSpy and the former president of Disney Online; among others. For more information, visit Kongregate at www.kongregate.com.

Contacts

Radiate PR for Kongregate
Laurie Thornton, 650-654-2660
laurie {at} radiatepr(.)com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriethornton