Ad-funded mobile game advertising, in-game mobile advertising, ad-wrapped mobile games, branded mobile games, mobile advergaming - all are terms to say the same thing - brands want to be in mobile games. But is this really so?

There are currently several ways of doing mobile game advertising:

  • Having different ads that are wrapped around a mobile game 

  • Creating a custom mobile game, that is branded specifically to the client needs

Now all of the GreyStripes, Cellufuns, InnerActives, and many others are mostly ad-wrapped. What are the complications with ad-wrapped mobile games?

  • People always have to download new ads, which might be slightly annoying
  • The ads are not directly implemented into the game, usually they are between some screens, which doesn’t make them perfectly interactive
  • The ads are hard to understand how they are clicked
  • People mostly go online and get the full games for free that are ad-free

On the other hand, you have a possibility of creating a specialized branded mobile game - which I think is a great choice. Considering that you can really include it well in a marketing campaign, it can be a perfect driver of a specific audience on the site. I have seen successful projects being done for clients where they had over 250,000 downloads just in one country for one free game, which compared to the price they paid was extremely small.

Greystripe recently published a report, in which they claim great results on a “Golden Compass” movie campaign. Their findings in this report are great, but the report lacks relevant numbers:

  • How many people was the ad shown to
  • How many people actually converted to clicked

Also, how many people actually do use the sponsored downloaded games, and how many use them regularly? Not just a “I downloaded once” thing.

Honestly at this stage, advertisers are really not biting for it. Even despite the positive hype in the industry regarding ad-funded mobile gaming, the advertisers haven’t really touched it that much. I think in a long-term they will try to understand where was the benefit of such sponsored gaming.

Summary
I think mobile game advertising is really great, but it will take some time and patience for it to evolve, and get into advertiser doors.

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