Tag: Jawaker

Jawaker Launches Campaign Management Tool For Advertisers

MMM 3 Comments

JawakerJawaker, the online multiplayer card games website that was previously reviewed here, and whose co-founder Mohamad Haj Hasan was interviewed here, has introduced a new feature called the Jawaker Campaigner.

Jawaker’s approach to serving ads on its cards games platform has been an interesting and different once from the beginning, with them choosing to move away from the traditional advertising options and coming up with what they call “Cost per Hand” (CPH for short).

The idea is that every CPH credit displays an ad (which consists of branding the back of all the cards on the table, branding the table cloth and a small text ad on the right side of the page with a target link) to the player for an entire round (or “hand”) of play.

Their ad server has been in place for some time now and they have been tweaking it and enhancing it so as to reach a point when they can open it up to potential advertisers to log in and create their own targeted advertising campaigns on Jawaker.
The result of these efforts is Jawaker Campaigner which does just that; enabling advertisers to create their campaigns and choose to target their ads based on: Country, Gender, Age and Time of Day.

Jawaker Campaigner

Advertisers can state the maximum number of hands to serve per day, write their ad text and target URL (in both Arabic and English) and upload their ad images. Jawaker will then approve the campaign and start serving the ads. The advertiser can freeze or delete the campaign whenever they want and can add as many campaigns as they like.

Jawaker automatically deducts credits from the advertiser’s total CPH credits as soon as an ad is served on a hand to the target audience. The advertiser will also be able to see statistics on their campaign such as how many impressions were served, how many clicks their ad got and their average implied click-through rate.

Currently, advertisers need to contact Jawaker in order to get an account and purchase credits, but an automatic sign-up and online credit purchase system should be rolled out soon.

Jawaker Adds To Advertising Options With Game Table Changes

MMM 2 Comments

Jawaker

Jawaker, the online multiplayer card games website that was previously reviewed here, and whose co-founder Mohamad Haj Hasan was interviewed here, has introduced some new changes to their game table, expanding the available advertising options on the platform.

The upgrades on the game table aimed to make it more user friendly for users, but also to adapt to the needs of their advertising clients.

Among the major changes on the game table is a re-organization of certain elements like the information bar and chat box, to make it easier for users to see more information in a more convenient way.

But more importantly, in addition to their original ad serving model of branding the back of cards, they’ve introduced the possibility to have a watermarked logo of the brand on the game table itself as well as a text ad on the right side of the table that pushes the message that the advertiser wants to relay to their audience. This text ad has a link to the advertisers target URL.

Jawaker Table

Jawaker currently have the popular cards games: Trix, Trix Complex, Solitaire and Tarneeb; and plan to roll out more multi-player card games in the future.

Interview With Mohamad Haj Hasan, Co-Founder Of Jawaker & Akhtaboot

MMM 2 Comments

Mohamad Haj HasanGoing back to our interviews with Arab internet entrepreneurs, we bring you a new interview with Mohamad Haj Hasan, co-founder of Jordan based Boundless, the company behind online cards game destination Jawaker, and online job portal Akhtaboot.

Of course, before anything I’d like to thank Mohamad for taking the time to answer our questions about Jawaker, their experience with it and where they aim to take it.

How did you get the idea for Jawaker? and what made you passionate about it as a project?

The idea of Jawaker came about when my partner, Yousef Shamoun, and I were bored one day and felt like playing cards online. We knew that there were a bunch of sites offering a wide variety of card games, and we thought that there must be at least one that has the card games that we grew up with (i.e. Trix, Tarneeb, Basra, etc.). Of course, we knew there were many programs that allowed us to play with a computer, but we wanted a multi-player experience of playing with other people. After spending time searching for such a site with no success, we decided to build our own site.

We decided to have our gaming infrastructure be based in Javascript (without the need for any downloads) in order to allow us to rapidly develop new games for the site. It is very easy to be passionate about Jawaker, because everything we do is very fun. Testing literally means playing, and since you are the first mover in the market, the thrill of innovation is a huge motivator.

What were the main challenges you faced while bringing Jawaker to life?

We originally thought that a gaming website would be simple. But we soon realized that there were so many issues and hurdles, even beyond the obvious technical ones. Gathering the “official” rules for these games and applying the UI based on these rules is not an easy task. Also, having the game play be user-friendly, fun and as close to playing in reality is quite challenging. There were huge debates on how and what information to show and also how to design gaming transitions that would scale across multiple games.

Then came the users and all the issues that come with putting yourself out there in front of people. We were always focused on a multi-player gaming experience, and that means that a critical mass of concurrent users needs to be on your site in order for the site to become alive. Tweaking the options around the game play itself was a big challenge that we solved by gathering statistics, listening to our users and reading the logs.

Read More

Jawaker, Online Multiplayer Card Games For The Arab World

MMM 2 Comments

JawakerJawaker is a new online multiplayer card games website that was launched recently for the Arab world, by the same team that is behind the online career network Akhtaboot.

The service is focused on delivering an entirely browser-based version of the most popular card games in the Arab world to an Arab and international audience.

The first game that is available through the service is ‘Trix‘ (a.k.a Trex), a card game that is very popular in many Middle Eastern countries, including Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria and United Arab Emirates. More card games like ‘Tarneeb‘ and other Arab favourites are planned to be added to the website in the future.

Players can join an already existing game, or from the game lobby, set up multiplayer games with their friends or with other visitors to the site. Unfinished games can be saved for completion later. 

Jawaker screenshot

Jawaker was one of the startups at DemoCamp Dubai 3, where Mohamed Haj Hasan and Fouad Mardini presented the service, and talked about their vision for it.

 

“The model is social interaction – the web is about networking, and cards is very ingrained in Arab culture,” said Mohamed Haj Hasan. “It’s a ‘build it and they will come’ approach. Once you get the users you can monetize it however you want, advertising, sponsorships, subscriptions or selling it to another company.”

They also plan to host tournaments and ranked competitions, where users pay to enter and can win prizes. Advertisers will be able to sponsor the backs of each card, an interesting adaptation of traditional online banner advertising. 

“When we couldn’t find a single website that would let us play online together, we just thought ‘lets make it’,” said Fouad Mardini. “This was something we wanted for ourselves, so it really has been a very fun project to work on.”

# Jawaker