How to Advertise Business Through Mobile Games?
Last year, mobile advertising grew to $112 billion. But only 15% of it was spent on mobile games. While the gaming niche is huge, why doesn’t it capture a major chunk of the ad market? Well, because brands aren’t represented well.
Businesses such as McDonald’s want everyone to be aware of their products globally. Previously businesses avoided gaming and ignored it as a niche activity. But today, the world is different and more than 50% of the mobile users play games regularly.
The truth is businesses do want to be a part of the games and they are doing it as fast as they can. But, before shifting budgets from past platforms such as TV, businesses have to know what works. Here are a few methods which businesses choose to have success with ads in gaming.
Gatorade and Asos strategy of Sponsored in-game events:
Just like some TV channels offer a targeted experience, like sports channels, some games offer that too, offering brands a reliable way to interact with players. For instance, sports drink company Gatorade offers players a virtual electrolyte energy booster via refills in EAs Madden NFL Mobile helping the player plays more.
EA also joined with Asos, a clothing company in its stimulation game The Sims Mobile. You have innumerable customization options and sandbox play style offering the same experience as shopping for clothes on the internet. This allows Asos to launch branded clothes and timed tournaments to Sims players. Not many games have real-world themes such as The Sims or Madden but those that do are really profitable for businesses.
Nestl’ strategy of Rewarded ads:
Rewarded videos are the top trending ad format. Rather than forcing ads on your players, you offer them a bonus to watch those videos. Rewarded ads are the reason why games such as Crossy Road can make players excited and generate millions in income.
For a Nestl campaign, the food maker joined hands with King and offered rewarded ads across a portfolio of the publishers which ranged over 200 mobile game titles including the top ones Candy Crush Saga. This strategy works well and over 99% of the ads are viewed till the end.
Myntra and Kellogg’s strategy of Playable ads:
Playable ads are the ones that allow the users to interact. They are designed for in-game usage and can look a lot like an actual game. It is basically used for advertising mobile games. But, because engagement is the life source of marketing, playable ads convert the natural game engagement to advertisers.
Gameloft created small, communicative ads to market the cereal brand Froot Loops. It also created a playable ad campaign for Myntra which got an amazing 82% completion rate in just 2 months.
Starbucks strategy of Augmented reality ads:
Augmented reality connects games to the real world through a phone. Starbucks used the physical parts of Pokemon Go to use in-store people with more than 7800 stores becoming Pokemon Gyms during the peak popularity of the game. Then it encouraged the people by creating a personalized drink Pokemon Go Frappuccino to make the droves entering their store hunt for virtual monsters.
Brands choose mobile games as a good channel for advertisement. Businesses choose different advertisement app to design their features and increase user-flow for brighter success.
