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PlayAbly - the confluence of shopping and entertainment

Introducing PlayAbly – Your customer engagement sucks. Try this instead.

John Cheng
PlayAbly
https://www.playably.ai
#b2b#gaming#marketing#e-commerce#personalization

Hey YC 👋 We’re John and Angelo — former Unity Technologies ads, analytics, and data leads — and we’re building PlayAbly: the AI-powered gamification layer that turns website traffic into high-intent, high-converting journeys. The confluence of shopping and entertainment.

🧠 At Unity, we personalized gameplay for 2B+ users across thousands of titles. Now we’re bringing that same behavioral insight to B2B brands and ecommerce — where most sites still feel too generic, not an engaging experience

🎯 We saw it firsthand: brands burning cash on top-of-funnel, only to leak it through lifeless landing pages, collection pages, and generic lead forms. So we built PlayAbly — a conversion layer that feels like fun but performs like performance marketing.

🌍 Used by both B2B and DTC:

  • Classkick (B2B tool for teachers): to qualify and convert education leads via smart quiz games.
  • Skout (DTC Kid’s Snacks): to increase AOV and conversion rates with fun product discovery

🧨 TL;DR: Replace "Spin to Win" with a game your online customer actually wants to play.

❌ The Problem

Brands spend on Meta, TikTok, SEO — but don’t retain attention once shoppers land. Today’s customers ignore pop-ups, abandon forms, and bounce from even the best-looking sites. Why?

Because passive web experiences can’t compete with the dopamine drip of social and mobile gaming. And standard segmentation flows — quizzes, email captures — are too slow, too boring, or too static to convert attention into action.

Retargeting is expensive, email/SMS open rates are tanking, and most stores don’t know who their customers really are.

🕳️ Most marketing funnels are:

  • Bland → no interaction, no retention
  • Blind → poor data on why visitors bounce
  • Bloated → costly retargeting with low ROAS

✅ Our Solution

PlayAbly creates opportunities for engagement —online, in-store, and everywhere in between.

We help brands turn passive moments into active engagement—whether that’s on a website, at a retail display, with a QR code at a restaurant, or in a B2B lead funnel. From quizzes to mini-games, our interactive layers boost attention, capture data, and drive action—bridging consumption and entertainment to make every brand moment more memorable and more effective.

Playable funnels: Games that feel native to your brand and drive:

  • 📈 Higher engagement
  • 💬 Useable first-party data
  • 💸 Measurable revenue lift - conversions up to 3x, 2x more email/SMS opt-ins than the leading popup, recover 89% of lost engagement

🎯 How it works:

  • Choose from our library of high-performing game templates (e.g. match-3, swipe, scratch, stack)
  • Customize it to your brand’s look, products, and tone
  • Integrate via Shopify, Klaviyo, Hubspot, or embed directly
  • Launch in minutes — no dev required
  • OR - if you’re looking for a more custom game, let us know what you’re looking for

🧠 Behind the scenes: AI + behavioral data personalize the game, questions, and post-game flow based on real-time signals.

🚀 Why It Works

Our games don’t just entertain — they segment, educate, and convert:

  • DTC: Skout Results: 7X ROI, 4X Email Opt-ins, 20% Higher AOV

  • B2B: Classkick Results: 5X ROI, 3X Email Open Rates

Retention’s better too: PlayAbly games collect data that actually gets used — building better lists, sequences, and personalization downstream.

💡 Why We Built It

At Unity, we pioneered user-level personalization through gameplay — optimizing ads and UX with real-time behavioral signals. We saw firsthand how play builds trust, surfaces intent, and creates emotional stickiness.

We asked: what if B2B sales and ecommerce wasn’t just functional, but fun?

So we built PlayAbly:

  • To help brands personalize authentically — not creepily
  • To make every site visit feel like a VIP concierge interaction
  • To let brands build relationships, not just retargeting funnels

We believe AI should act like the best in-store rep: observant, empathetic, memorable — not a template engine.

🕹️ Want to Try?

We’re working with DTC and B2B brands who want:

  • Better conversion/retention without more ad spend
  • Higher-quality customer data, captured playfully
  • Personalization built around actual shopper behavior

🕹️ Try a PlayAbly game:


Book a Demo 

Offer: Mention YC and get 20% off your first game

Whether you're selling skincare, classrooms, or courseware — let’s make it fun, data-rich, and wildly effective.

#ai #ecommerce #gamification #dtc #b2b #retention #personalization #zero_party_data

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