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?
