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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