Potto, A Free Lotto Game For Promoting Games

How many ways can you think of to promote a game? Freemium, propelling to the top of the app store ranking by all means, social media campaign, cross-promotion… But I bet none of you have thought of this idea as Potto, a Korea-based startup trying to promote games through a lotto game.

Potto is a free global Lotto app, and also a nice advertising platform for game publishers. Users of Potto get their virtual lottery tickets by watching game videos, finishing interesting tasks, and win the rewards if they are lucky. Currently the app is available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

How to Play?

1. Register, choose 7 lucky numbers out of 49 and submit.
2. Watch 5 videos (all within 1 min) and answer the quizzes correctly.
3. Wait for the lottery draw broadcast and dream of winning.
4. Share the app and information with friends and raise the winning money.
5. Watch the live broadcast and check the result.

How To Promote?

1. To make sure players are actually watching the game videos and paying attention to them. Users will see a penguin that appears in the middle of the video and they need to spot the location of the penguin after each video. A badge will be collected after each video quiz is done. When a user collects 5 badges then he or she can take part in the lotto once. What’s more, below each video there are links for SNS sharing and downloading. (Here is a demonstration video).
2. The more players the higher rewards thus this model encourages users to invite more players (viewers) to involve. Everyone loves lottery, so it’s just like a social media campaign for free.
3. The lottery rewards come from the marketing costs gaming publishers paid. (If in the first round of lottery no one wins, the rewards will accumulate for the next round.)

Launched one month ago, this interesting app has hit the top 5 in free app rankings and No.1 in the entertainment app rankings in Korea. For the team behind it, they take 50% of the marketing fee from gaming companies as the lottery rewards and take the other half as revenues. They claimed that after the balance of payments, the team of 10 would put 60% of the revenues into charity.

Developed by TrafficGem Corp, this app is the first product by this Korean company. Founder Manchul Ko, an advertising and PR major, once worked in a software company Ensight Media Inc. and started the company in 2013.