Eureka – ad-funded games works
Rating: what about the hard core?
By Annie Turner
Israel’s largest mobile operator Cellcom has completed its first trial of an ad-funded mobile games service powered by innerActive technology. The new innovative service showed results of 44% click-through rate (CTR) and 19% acquisition rate for mobile advertising campaigns.
The value-added service offers subscribers free game downloads, sponsored by brands such as: Tnuva, Nokia, McDonalds, Diadora, Samsung, Adidas and Walt Disney. Interactive advertising agencies such as McCann Digital, Saatchi & Saatchi, BBDO and nextin participated in the month-long pilot.
innerActive’s system dynamically inserts ads and marketing content for product placement within the games. With the system, mobile in-game ads were targeted and segmented in real-time according to each user’s profile, behaviour and responses. In addition, mobile coupons and other incentives were offered for conversion and cross-over to other media channels like websites and point of sales.
On average during the trial users downloaded ten times more games than before it. Also, 24% of the participants did not download games in the six month period before the test and 54% did not do it in the three months prior to the pilot.
Now that is interesting; will attracting casual gamers ever be more lucrative through ad revenue than the paid-for stuff by the hard core?
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One Response to “Eureka – ad-funded games works”
Well Annie, I believe the answer to your last question is: Yes. Ad funded models cannot rely on the current paying consumers but to enlarge the audience ‘cake’. The model described in the article by innerActive match the assumption that more money could be generated from ads without harming the existing channels.
Comment made on July 13th, 2007 at 1:26 amLeave a Comment