Kongregate, the Flash game website home to such illuminaries as Desktop Tower Defense, has just announced an influx of $3 million from Bezos Expeditions. In the same breath, the company also disclosed the hiring of Lee Uniacke, formerly of Viacom, as chief revenue officer.
Kongregate is a popular website among those in the know, but it definitely could use some work on handling its user load. Given that at the time of this writing the website is currently down, I think it’s wise that the company will use the investment to work on scaling:
The company says the new investment will be used to continue to scale the site, which it says sees over 3 million monthly unique visitors, with 93 percent of those spending nearly an hour a day playing, compared to some 20 minutes for the average Facebook user.
Bezos Expeditions is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ personal investment firm.
As for Uniacke, his background in online gaming and advertising sales will make him well suited to further the monetization of Kongregate:
Uniacke joins Kongregate from Viacom’s MTV Networks, where he served as its sales VP. During his tenure at the site, says Kongregate, ad revenue for Viacom’s Atom Entertainment network of sites like Shockwave.com and AddictingGames.com tripled. Uniacke was also formerly a group publisher at 1up.com owners Ziff-Davis Media.
Kongregate says that under Uniacke’s leadership, it hopes to “secure high-profile advertising and promotional partnerships based on its tremendous reach and appeal to the target audience – men ages 13-24.”
While it’s hard breaking to hear that I’m no long in Kongregate’s target demographic, Uniacke certainly understands how the Flash gaming portal appeals to a younger generation:
Said Uniacke on the site, “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… It’s the ideal online destination for reaching the hard-to-pin-down young male demographic for advertisers.”
I wasn’t aware we had decided on a name for this generation. ADHD generation? Really? That’s hardly as cool as Gen X. All the same, the future is looking bright for Kongregate.
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