Mobile Gaming

Humans have always been hardwired for the rush of a challenge and pride in beating opponents.  Now marketers are discovering the "power of play" to boost customer interaction.

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Crash Course in App Monetization

When picturing the average gamer, you wouldn’t be blamed if that image depicts a geeky college-aged male with the latest gaming console and the greatest mobile gadgets – loaded with every imaginable app – all but surgically attached.

That image, though classic, would be inaccurate.

SAN FRANCISCO, November 27, 2012 – Acclaimed game developer Halfbrick, well-known around

Mobile Game Marketing
By Jim Durrell

Greystripe's director of product management explores whether mobile games are sticking with marketers.

Advertisers are embracing mobile marketing, and many are moving even faster than when they adopted online advertising in the late 1990s. At the same time, analyst reports show that although the desire for mobile gaming is growing among consumers, they remain highly price sensitive. In this article, we'll explore how these factors suggest that advertising in mobile games is a huge opportunity and poised to explode over the next one to three years.

Advertising in mobile games around the world Big brand names are already investing in mobile advergaming development, and the results have been worthy of some "high scores." For instance, Coca-Cola launched a mobile game in India called "Thumbs Up Everest--" a rock climbing adventure that included weekly prize giveaways and a top-score board. The results were impressive with more than 350,000 games downloaded each week.

Advergaming also proved successful in creating pre-release buzz for Bollywood film "Jurm," where approximately 150,000 people downloaded the movie's puzzle game the first day, and volume approached 500,000 by the end of the week. Furthermore, the advergame for Jurm was a successful viral marketing tool, spreading from urban areas (where it was mostly advertised) to small towns by word of mouth, providing even more exposure for the movie.

Asia-Pacific countries lead the way for mobile game advertising opportunities, with 28 percent of consumers playing downloaded single-player mobile games at least once a week, according to Parks Associates' research.

Europe and North America lag behind, with only 13 percent and eight percent, respectively, downloading mobile games, although far greater numbers play preloaded games.

Sparking Mobile Games through Advertising Right now, there is a strong consumer desire for more fun and informational cell phone services. Recent Pew Research studies show that cell phone owners want to do more with mobile technology, and game playing ranks high on the list. Wider deployment of 3G networks, additional investment from game publishers, and more powerful devices will all improve the mobile gaming experience.

Despite all these factors, game downloads in Europe and North America have not been growing as a percentage of subscribers (about 13 and eight percent, respectively). Why the contradiction? A May 2006 M:Metrics report indicates price sensitivity is a major reason. Simply, lower price points are required to meet strong consumer demand and really ignite mobile gaming. And advertising sponsored mobile games can enable those lower prices.

Why are advertisers interested in mobile games? Demographics are certainly one reason. In the U.S., a May 2006 M:Metrics report indicates mobile games are downloaded at a rate of five million per month and, of the 16 million unique players, 35 percent are in the 18-34 male demographic that is so sought by advertisers. From trends in online gaming, we can expect to reach a more diverse group in the future. For example, women in their 30s and 40s account for a significant segment of game aficionados on the web, playing everything from solitaire and puzzles to casino and retro shoot-em-up classics.

Games are an ideal way to integrate mobile into an advertising campaign because they support larger and richer creatives than WAP pages. Games fill the whole screen and offer advertising without competition for user attention. Gaming is also attractive since it is a leisure time activity when users are more receptive to marketing messages. In a recent Mobile Entertainment Forum survey, 60 percent of respondents felt mobile games were "perfectly" or "very" suited for advertising. Additionally, around-game sponsorships are a cost-effective way to create positive brand associations without disrupting game play and without the cost of custom advergame development.

Mobile Game Ad Networks
Before mobile game advertising can really take off, some of advertisers' trepidations about this new market must first be allayed. Ad networks with reliable metrics, broad reach and sophisticated targeting will be a requirement. Advertisers will expect many of the same features they receive from online networks: self-service web interfaces, geotargeting for regional advertising, and impression capping. And critically important, reliable impression measurements are required. With these types of features, both large and small advertisers can tap mobile advertising with the same ease that they use Google AdSense and other online networks.

To be most effective, mobile game ad networks should support the creative formats and new actions that let advertisers tap the unique features of mobile devices. Mobile specific features such as click-to-call, location-based ads, opt-in for SMS and MMS, and consumer-to-consumer viral marketing will also drive the value of mobile ads. Looking to the future, advertising solutions should also provide a path to supporting emerging formats like mobile video.

M2M: Mobile-to-Mobile marketing
One of the most attractive opportunities for mobile ad networks is in Mobile-to-Mobile (M2M) marketing, which uses mobile-based advertising to drive sales of mobile ringtones, videos, wallpapers and games. These can be uniquely sold through mobile advertising since conversion can be immediate; there are anecdotal reports of click-through-rates over 50 percent.

M2M is precisely the strategy that GPShopper is employing to market its Slifter location-aware shopping application. Mobile advertisements placed through the Greystripe AdWrap network reach a wide game-playing audience and encourage them to download the free Slifter mobile application right there and then. To maximize effectiveness, the advertisements are targeted only at consumers using phones capable of running Java applications and wireless carriers that allow downloads.

Conclusion
As seen around the world, there is growing interest in mobile gaming and a great opportunity for in-game advertising. The key will be how advertisers take advantage of the technology available and where they invest their resources. Brands and advertisers can capitalize on the current sophisticated technology available, which is providing better reach, reliable metrics, and unique ways to engage mobile customers. Furthermore, they can leverage the momentum of gaming among a diverse and growing population that is more open to new forms of marketing. Let the games begin!

Jim Durrell is the director of product management at Greystripe and one of the inventors of Greystripe's AdWrap technology. Jim represents Greystripe in the Mobile Marketing Alliance, where he participates in the Ad Standards and Metrics committees. Prior to joining Greystripe, he was responsible for product management of location-based services at TruePosition, and before that accumulated more than ten years of telecommunications experience in management, sales, and engineering.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Advergaming: Next on the Mobile Marketing List?

BY Laura Marriott | June 29, 2006
ClickZ

To View Direct Article, please click HERE.

There's been a lot of hype lately about gaming, advergaming, and the role both play in the mobile marketing value chain. Brands can use mobile games for brand awareness, premium content revenue, product placement, and so on. Games can help integrate fun and entertainment into the mobile consumer's experience, driving overall adoption of mobile and brand participation.

Mobile Gaming

Face it. Mobile games are pricey. Costing anywhere from $2 to $8 per download, consumers are downloading them but perhaps not to the extent the industry originally thought they would. According to M:Metrics (PDF download), consumers cite pricing, choice, and lack of interest as the top reasons for not downloading more games. Only 2.7 percent of U.S., 4.2 percent of U.K., and 2.5 percent of German mobile subscribers downloaded a game in March. Mobile gaming is still a small portion of the overall mobile content sector.

How can games be made more economical for consumers? Perhaps the easiest and most talked about method is to subsidize games through advertising. By watching an ad before the game or allowing brand product placement within a game, consumers can download the game at a discount or for free.

Mobile Advergaming

Advergaming basically promotes a product or service throughout the game. Many brands already leverage advergaming in campaigns. CoverGirl recently offered visitors to its site a mobile game download for "Girls' Night Out Solitaire." Site visitors received $1.00 off the $5.99 mobile game download just for visiting the site. If consumers entered the UPC code for the LashExact product, they received $2.00 off the game download. CoverGirl also tempted visitors to the site with tie-in promotional prizes. The game not only featured brand sponsorship but also included brand or product placement within the game.

Teen Expectations

Research just released from Mobilitec's global research project, The Lab, looks at how teens use mobile content. Mobilitec discovered teenagers expected to be marketed to on their phones, similar to how the Internet, TV, and other media work. In regard to gaming, teens anticipate and expect advertising, special offers, e-mail, and SMS (define) messages advising them of new games, incentives, and ways to rate and share games (viral marketing).

The poll also shows teens are surprised there aren't more games that tie into the brands they recognize (they're actually looking for looking for television and movie references). Teens expect advertising in their gaming experience, particularly if it leads to discounts or incentives.

According to M:Metrics, though, males 18-34 are the largest audience for game downloads. So though teens may be open to the advertising, how will older demographics feel?

Conclusion

Advertising dominates every sphere of our life: the Internet, television, outdoor... Ads are everywhere, and mobile is no exception. Ads are being rolled out or trialed in messaging, mobile Web, video, and downloads. As with every other advertising medium, ads will play a role in the mobile channel. It's simply a question of how and when.

What opportunities do games present to the brand? A source of premium content revenue? Maybe. A chance to connect with consumers and build brand awareness on an ongoing basis? Yes. An opportunity to integrate advertising and product placement into games to further expand the message to the consumer? Definitely!

Advergaming presents an opportunity for brands to reach the consumer. If the demographic target is ideal and fun is a focus, try offering games as part of your mobile marketing mix. Lots of partners available who have the expertise to help out.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Get Your Game On: The Rise of <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Mobile Advergames<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

By Rick Mathieson

Call them pocket pastimes. Games to go. Or even just fun on the run.

By whatever name, mobile games have garnered a massive amount of industry press over the last year, with worldwide sales expected to top $1.7 billion by 2008, according to IDC.  As a result, marketers in numerous industry categories have taken notice. And many are setting their sights on using mobile games not just as revenue earners, but as exciting new venues for selling everything from automobiles to motion pictures.

And no wonder: Dubbed “branded entertainment,” mobile games designed to feature specific products in starring roles can create immersive experiences for key demographic audiences.

In Jeep Off Road Jam, for instance, players wiggle their Wrangler down trails and rough terrain. As they progress up levels, their Jeeps are upgraded to the Sport, Sahara and, finally, the top of the line Rubicon.

“Here’s an opportunity where you can blend the brand into the entertainment experience, with rich graphics, color, and action” says Craig Holland, founder and former president of Irvine, Calif.-based mobile game maker Thumbworks, which was recently acquired by international mobile entertainment firm IN-FUSIO.

Thumbworks also produced Suzuki Motocross Challenge, which places players at the center of a championship motocross race featuring jumps, obstacles, and bonus points for aerial stunts.

“The bikes in the game are based on the real motorcycles, down to the color and the model numbers,” says Holland. “Games are a really interesting alternative, because if you look at other types of media, advertising interrupts the entertainment experience – and when you’re talking about a young male audience, guys are trying to get rid of that kind of stuff. [Branded games] make you part of that experience in a very powerful way.”

Besides, there’s money to be made – typically $3.99 to $5.99 per mobile game, says Holland.

Even when they’re free, the ability to use mBranding can prove quite powerful. In PC-based gaming, more than 10 million people have downloaded America’s Army, a first-person shooter game that the Army gives away as a rather desensitizing – and reportedly effective – recruitment tool. And the $40 Full Spectrum Warrior sets the action in Baghdad, where players take on Iraqi insurgents.

A variant called “in-game branding” enables marketers of everything from movies to consumer-packaged goods to use gaming as a promotional tool. Imagine billboards and signage in popular games like NBA Basketball One-on-One, Highway Racer, JAMDAT Racing or Baseball Heroes of the MLBPAA, where advertisers can hawk everything from soda pop to candy bars to music CDs to athletic shoes.

       
Got game?

For DaimlerChrysler, in-game and branded game experiences have proven quite fruitful. Though the company doesn’t break out numbers for results from mobile games, its overall “advergame” initiative, which includes Challenge and the popular PC-based Jeep 4x4: Trail of Life, has resulted in hundreds of thousands of downloads. Approximately 40 percent of players report they’re considering buying one of the company’s vehicles.

“We’re using electronic gaming to do what we’ve done with advertising throughout the ages – we’re casting a net where the fish are schooling,” says Joel Schlader, Chrysler Group’s senior specialist for interactive marketing and gaming. “In some cases, gaming becomes a very good surrogate for a virtual test drive. One of the benefits of advertising through electronic gaming is that it’s very interactive and it’s fun. You can arguably provide more realism with electronic games than you can with any other medium, other than being physically with the product. It’s like a movie in that there is a story being told. But unlike a movie, the story has a different ending each time you play.”

Chrysler Group has also embedded advertising billboards in popular games like the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series of games.

Indeed, this trend toward product placement is growing swiftly. In Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, success on one level of gameplay is contingent on the protagonist mastering a Sony Ericsson smart phone. Spending on such in-game advertising has already reached $200 million a year worldwide, and could top $1 billion by 2008.

Given the changing media consumption patterns of 18- to 34-year old men, in particular, this is no small matter. In the wireline world, Nielsen Entertainment and game producer Activision have created a game-rating service similar to the venerable Nielsen TV service. Gamers who agree to participate use gear that tracks what games you’re playing, what level you’re on, and which in-game ads you’re being exposed to, so in-game advertisers can optimize their in-game ad space purchases at a level that’s currently impossible with television.

Using new peer-to-peer solutions from New York-based Massive Inc., advertisers like Nike, Daimler Chrysler and Intel even have the flexibility to serve up ads when players who are most likely to want their products are logged on. “We can target specific demographics or even specific regions of the country,” Richard Skeen, Massive’s VP for advertising sales, told Business 2.0.

That means if it’s June, and you’re at level three of WWE Day of Reckoning, you might see an ad for an upcoming summer blockbuster. If it’s November, you might see an ad for holiday gift ideas.  You may one day even be able to place a purchase.

And while the system currently only works with Massive’s wireline gaming network, similar functionality may one day come to wireless – and could even entail links to product information or even direct sales.

A Monster Hit

         Next month, branded mobile entertainment will take on a whole new level of visibility with the launch of King Kong: The Mobile Game, based on the remake of the famed movie classic by director Peter Jackson. With an acute sense for fan-boy enthusiasms, Jackson’s mobile game reportedly tells the entire story of the film, putting players in their choice of roles, from Kong to hapless human alike. The idea: create excitement in the film’s young male audience, while racking up some sizable licensing revenues.

And why not? Show business success has always been predicated on the pursuit of youth and the adoption of new technologies, from talkies to color movies to television to the Internet and beyond. It’s no different in wireless.

         “The entertainment industry is a very competitive business, and Hollywood has always been an early adopter of any new medium," says Jonathon Linner, CEO of Enpocket, which has produced mobile initiatives for several movies and TV shows.  "Hollywood is starting to pay attention to mobile because the results have been really incredible."

         And mobile advergames will likely play an increasing role in the equation.

As Thumbwork’s Holland puts it: “It sure beats an SMS campaign.”

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Adapted from BRANDING UNBOUND: The Future of Advertising, Sales and the Brand Experience in the Wireless Age © 2005 Rick Mathieson, Published by AMACOM Books, a division of American Management Association, New York, NY.  Used with permission.  All rights reserved. http://www.amacombooks.org.

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