Once upon a time, the phrase "video gamer" brought to mind a teenage boy or young adult man playing on a console.
But these are the new gamers…
Middle-age women play social media games in the largest numbers
Since online games like Words with Friends, Candy Crush Saga, and Farmville have penetrated social networks, gamers are looking a lot different.
First of all, they are primarily women (54%), and the average age of a social media gamer is 43 years old. She is college educated, married with children, and earns more than $50,000 annually.
Gone are the days when a brand looking to reach middle-age women were left only to advertise during nighttime dramas or in women’s magazines. The integration of social media and video games have diversified audiences and created ripe advertising opportunities. And these audiences are large. More than 20% of Facebook’s billion plus users play games within the site. Industry experts predict this will grow to 50% by 2014. The popularity of the genre may also create new advertising opportunities both internally and for agencies.
Mobile: Where Gaming and Advertising Intersect
Mobile device ownership is soaring, but mobile advertising is still a considerably smaller portion of most marketing budgets. Marketers continue to rely on other digital and even traditional platforms. Marketers have been slow to adopt and as a result, ownership is far outpacing relative spend.
For marketers looking to take to mobile, gaming provides an excellent place to start. Primarily because nearly one-third, 32%, of a mobile device owners time is spent playing games on their phone. There are several ways an advertiser might enter the gaming world for their brand:
- In-game: This usually occurs when a game creates a partnership with the a brand or a celebrity in which they are incorporated into the actual game play. Lady Gaga partnered with gaming company Zynga prior to the release of her "Born This Way” album. The game Farmville created a special farm where players were rewarded with exclusive content upon completing game levels.
- In-app: Ads that appear within the game between rounds, levels, games, etc.
This Honda ad is an example of in-app advertising within a round of Words With Friends. It incorporates the game into the ad.
- The Game as the Ad: Sometimes the game is the advertisement. Brands can launch mobile apps for games that coincide with and/or work in conjunction with the campaign.
The New ‘King’
Candy Crush saga is a fascinating marketing case study. At the time of this article it was one of the top grossing games on both Apple's App Store and Android’s Google Play Store. The highly addictive game is free and contains no advertising. It monetizes itself with in-app purchases of power-ups and access to levels with a purchase. The Sweden-based King.com’s matching game sensation is one of the most downloaded video games of all times, earning close to $633,000 a day, or more than one million dollars every other day.
The game gained popularity primarily via word-of-mouth and social media. The game even got some screen time in “Gangnam Style” artist and viral video superstar Psy’s follow-up video “Gentlemen.” The artist was playing the game in the video.
Perhaps what’s most unusual about Candy Crush Saga is that it is one of few mobile games that advertises on television independent of an partnership with one of the mobile or social platforms where their game is featured. King conducted national and local buys across multiple networks. They are innovating the mobile app marketing process by integrating their marketing beyond mobile devices and digital to TV advertising, a traditional media platform.
The Ad Game: Should Advertisers Play?
For advertisers thinking of playing around with social gaming in their digital budgets, here are some things to consider:
- Considerably better engagement than brand pages: Ads in social games have an average engagement rate of 20%, Facebook brand pages average about 0.50%.
- Industry high completion rates: Social and mobile video game ads have a 91% completion rate, the highest in the online ad industry.
- Measuring Social Gaming ROI: Online games are measured using Average Revenue per User (ARPU) or Average Revenue per Paying User (ARPPU)
- Freemiums: Games tend to be free with an additional revenue stream of offering a more feature-rich paid version or allowing players to buy upgrades to enhance play. For example Draw Something charges players for additional colors beyond the default color palette. In Candy Crush you can pay for powerups or to unlock levels. Words with Friends recently offered a paid statistical overview of your win/loss percentage. It also offers power-ups that will offer word suggestions based on your available letters and the tiles on the board.
YOUR TURN: Has your firm or brand implemented mobile games in some capacity in your marketing mix? How did it work for you? For those who have not, would you consider it? Why or why not?
