Qmerce Brings Brand-Customizable Social Games to Facebook

With $450K behind it in funding, Israeli-based Qmerce is helping business large and small add social games to their communities, particularly on Facebook.

The premise behind Qmerce’s value proposition isn’t new. That is, branded social games aimed at driving user engagement via rewards, achievements and consequently, loyalty.

With over 40 customers to date, including Crocs and Pizza Hut (the Israeli franchises), and 300,000 games played, it looks like this upstart might be going somewhere.

Qmerce is targeting online media, marketing and community managers, to use their platform to create customized/branded games for their audiences. Usually a high-cost endeavor, with Qmerce social games can be created minutes.

Pizza Hut, for example, used Qmerce to create a campaign that featured a time-race game tilted ‘Keep It Hot.’ The in-game ‘Car’ was changed to a pizza delivery motorcycle, with the Pizza Hut logo on the delivery box. In-game achievements had real-life counterparts in the form of free pizza and coupons.

I was a bit skeptical that wizard-built games can generate compelling engagement, but Qmerce CEO, Moti Cohen, claims that average user play is 50-minutes. I’ve already gone ahead and filed this under: ‘Eat hat.’

Creating social games on Qmerce is free for the time being. The company does however plan on providing a premium service with a higher degree of customization than available directly through the current interface.

For those of you that want to meet the Qmerce team, they will be taking part in the Israeli Pavilion at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC.