Ad-funded mobile games - where is it going? Today, ICQ launched ad-funded mobile games, and we have some exclusive commentary for you - so will they make money? Where is the ad-funded mobile game industry generally going? Are the ad-funded companies going to make any money?

Looking at the few companies out there doing ad-funded mobile gaming, such as: GreyStripe, 123play, innerActive, and some more, and many more also trying on the iPhone, joined with ad networks like Admob and others. Now are these companies making money? Right now, the only thing they are doing is burning it.

Mobile games are a one-to-all advertising, and I don’t think with this approach, they can make money. Also, they are not making money from any conversion whatsoever, which from the online space, companies like Playfish do this quite succesfully, and what they are claiming, that they are making 70% of money from transactions (buying in-game updates), and 30% of money from advertising, which is a big diversification.

I did a presentational piece today on Euro Mobile Media, where I said what I wrote above basically, and I would be looking at more of collecting data from online (multiplayer) mobile games, where perhaps targetting a user by his wants and needs could be easier.

ICQ launches ad-funded content

ICQ today, has launched ad-funded mobile content together with innerActive. My concern there would actually be, if they will ever make money on this. If this will not only hurt revenues from Premium ICQ Mobile games, that their developers have spent hundreds of thousands of EUR, and if this won’t kill the industry for both companies. To make money from this, the games have to be good, really good. If they are good, they kill the Premium model.

So let’s watch out for the numbers, perhaps innerActive will prove us wrong. ICQ has huge marketing power, and leveraging that could definately help. Wishing innerActive good luck with that.

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