Is Mobile effective in in-game advertising?

As the world of mobile makes constant developments in to what it can offer, developers are looking to expand the features of mobile individually as well as integrating features to create all new approaches to mobile advertising. Gaming has become one of the most popular uses for mobile; with this in mind, it makes sense that the two have been merged to create revolutionary strategies for mobile marketing. The merging has been dubbed “AdverGaming”, and although fairly new, AdverGaming has already made some high scores amongst the world’s major brands in some of the world’s biggest countries. Coca-Cola for instance has released a rock-climbing game in India called “Thumbs Up Everest”. Users of the game have the chance to win weekly prizes from the game, as well as prizes being rewarded to the top leaders on the games high-score board. Although the game seems simple and possibly boring, it has proven to have a high level of entertainment for users with over 350,000 users downloading the game each week. Not only does AdverGaming pose credible attributes for entertainment, it presents impressive qualities for reaching wide audience bases. Again in India, AdverGaming has been used and this time for generating hype for an upcoming Bollywood movie. The puzzle game brought in 150,000 user’s in only the first day, and after a week 500,000 users had downloaded the game. This powerful demonstration of AdverGaming’s scope creates exciting potential for engaging diverse audiences and key demographics. In the U.S.A for example, an estimated 16 million user’s downloads mobile games at a rate of around 5 million per month. Of the 16 million user’s, 35 percent fall in to the highly targeted 18-34 year old male demographic. However, AdverGaming does not simply target the major demographics; it also has the ability to engage more diverse demographics such as women in their 30’s and 40’s. Success for mobile marketing is not only from targeting and engaging the primary demographics, but also from targeting and engaging the other diverse demographics that can make the difference to the overall success of an entire marketing campaign. AdverGaming does not only present entertaining content to engage customers, but because of the technology used for the gaming, it can create richer advertising content to engage customers than would be found on standard WAP pages. This content is not only more attractive, but it opens up a user’s receptiveness to receiving advertising content. Users will play the games in their leisure time and thus be engaged by the advertising at a time where they are usually not willing to be engaged. AdverGaming is a promising venture that demonstrates power in reaching wide customer bases, specific and diverse target demographics, and engaging customers in previously unimaginable times. With correct use of the technology on hand, developers can make rich, engaging and entertaining content that creates fresh and exciting approaches to capturing growing audiences world-wide.