123play.com Mobile Game Advertising goes European

by: Cian Friday, October 24th, 2008

Following its success in the UK, free mobile gaming company 123play is making its services available in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

What does it do?
123play is based on a very simple idea. The more people who see an advert, the more effective that advert will be. So if everyone who wants to play games on the mobile Internet goes to just one site, it’s much better for the advertisers.
123play has centralised over 80 games from eight producers (so far). To download the game from 123play is completely free, and once it’s on your phone you can play it as often as you like. Only two things are asked of the gamer. The first is that they look at two ads while the game loads. The second is that the game connects to 123play’s server once per day to update those ads. That connection is the only cost faced by the consumer.
Markus Ramark, CEO of parent company MAS, said “There’s no other service out there that brings together great games and advertising from leading brands.” The idea seems to be that MAS will shoulder the payments to the game producers. They offer the games to consumers for free in order to draw eyes to their clients advertisements… and their expansion into four more European countries suggests that this idea is a succesful one.
What we think:
At first glance it looked like 123play was being crowbarred into the market as an unneeded middle man. However, since MAS are paying the game producers, nobody loses out. The casual mobile gamer will already be frowning at the cost of their mobile Internet data charges. If you add a subscription fee to that, people will lose interest. Having to read through a few advertisements to get loads of free games is a small price to pay.

Bena adds- sounds like this is pure play mobile advertising solution in the guise of mobile gaming. The winner here is the advertiser and the advertisers needs are catered too primarily. Mobile gaming is the vehicle in which the adverts are delivered so 123play is just a channel. This is interesting as it puts a new twist on the way in which advertisers are being engaged for the mobile market.