Free to play games dominate the mobile gaming market. This has led to in-app advertising becoming a huge and scalable revenue stream for all kinds of mobile gaming apps as well as businesses in other industries.
According to Venturebeat, by 2024, in-game ad revenue will reach $56 billion. It is a marketing channel all businesses should be looking into. If you want to know more about in-game ads and if they are the right choice for your business, you have come to the right place. In this article we take a deep dive into why in-game ads are so successful and bust some common myths marketers believe about in-game mobile ads.
Revenue from in-game mobile apps is growing year over year. No one can deny that when used correctly it is a lucrative marketing channel and that it is a channel that will be here to stay for the future. But just what is it that makes in-game mobile ads so effective?
Using the right strategy is key to seeing success from your ads. At top strategy for in-game mobile ads is using remarketing. This ad strategy significantly increases retention, share of paying users, and average revenue per paying user.
Remarketing campaigns can be paired with other marketing strategies such as push notifications, social media campaigns and more, that offer opportunities to engage with your users when they are off-platform.
In-game currency as a reward for interacting with ads is a great incentive for many users. It shows users the value of in-app purchases without getting them to commit to anything more than watching an ad.
This is a kind of ‘foot-in-the-door’ technique where you increase the likelihood of users undertaking an action (making an in-app purchase) by giving them a small taste of the benefits by giving them ‘free’ in-game benefits.
These rewards for watching ads mean that advertisers will often see high engagement rates with their ads. Users will often watch a full video ad or interact with a playable ad to get the reward. When targeting well this gives you the chance to get in front of your ideal audience in a way other ad platforms can’t.
Long gone are the days of gaming being a space primarily dominated by teenage boys. The split for mobile gaming aducies by genre is 51% female and 49% male – almost even.
In-game mobile apps have a diversified audience making them a great marketing channel for a wide variety of businesses. The demographic data does show that audiences are typically younger audience. However, of internet users in the age group 55 to 64, two thirds of them play video games.
A mobile gamer could be anyone. Almost every demographic you can think of will include gamers. From a young female student in New York to a middle aged highly educated, affluent man, or 40+ mums across a wide socio-economic spectrum that hold a huge amount of buying power.
A common issue that marketers think they will experience with in-game mobile ads is that they are invasive and irritate users. This can be true of certain ad formats however there are a wide variety of ad formats that include display ads, playable ads and more that provide a less invasive experience and are more engaging for users.
Negative media coverage of mobile gaming – particularly the violence that some mobile games include makes brands cautious about advertising in games. There is a common misconception that due to this somewhat unsavoury reputation that in-game ads are inherently unsafe for brands.
However in-game mobile apps are overall very safe environments for brands – especially free-to-play games such as arcade games, sports games and puzzle games which are some of the most popular gaming genres on mobile.
Compared to video games mobile games are often much more light hearted. You do need to apply the same inventory quality measures you will on other programmatic formats but you will find that overall it is an inherently safe environment.
In-game mobile ads are a growing revenue stream and present a lucrative opportunity for many brands. Understanding where there successful come from (such as incentivising players to watch ads) and breaking myths (such as gamin is an unsafe environment for brands) will help you approach your ad strategy in a more effective way.
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