

Advertising in Mobile Games is Broken - rabble
http://blog.betable.com/advertising-in-mobile-games-is-broken

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MatthewB
There's plenty of room for innovation in the mobile game ad space.

I actually do like the strategy of making the ads part of an achievement
system for the game. This would work especially well for localized ads. For
example, if you reach a certain level on a game, get $2 off your sandwich at
Subway. This allows for brand exposure and funnels people into the physical
stores.

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drcube
My wife stopped letting our son play Angry Birds on her phone because of the
scantily clad ladies advertising "meet sexy singles in your area". When will
Adblock Plus port to Android?

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SomeCallMeTim
Sorry, but AdBlock on a game like Angry Birds IS stealing.

Rovio certainly has a lot of money, but other developers aren't so lucky --
and many are barely scraping by.

Try investing nearly $5000 and seven months of your life in developing a game
that's being ad supported, where your income relies on ads, and then watch
people joke about blocking them. It sucks, trust me.

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svmegatron
I don't disagree with you, but drcube's point is a serious and valid one. It
also smells like an opportunity for devs and/or ad networks to provide much
better targeting. Ad-supported games for kids should be able to get kid-
appropriate ads if the developer or the parent so choose. I haven't done
enough ad-supported game development to know if that kind of thing is
currently possible, but its something I would look into if a 5 year old were
using my ipod regularly.

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SomeCallMeTim
It's a tricky problem, actually.

My game as an example: Almost half of the users are under 18, but most of the
other half are in the 18-35 range (according to Flurry metrics, which guesses
what the age of a user is based on what OTHER apps on the device are reporting
-- I'm not asking them myself).

Unless I ask each user how old they are, I can't know whether or not to serve
them ads. And if I DO ask them, then people often feel like I'm prying too
much. ESPECIALLY if I'm asking if they are under 15 (and finding out they're
under 13 would cause COPPA to kick in [1]).

I already have the "no adult ads" selected in my ad provider, which is
supposed to block singles ads, but I've seen them come up anyway. Presumably
if I fed them an age that I'd gotten from a user they would be filtering the
ads more, if only to target them better.

Don't know.

[1] <http://www.coppa.org/>

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Splines
Probably the only way to really make ad-supported gameplay a reality would be
to flip the model up-side down: Design the game around the ad itself.

We've seen a few of these (the Burger King Xbox games come to mind). Some of
them are actually fun to play.

Unfortunately, this sort of work doesn't come cheap.

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MatthewB
I have to disagree with this strategy. At my company we have made a few one-
off games for advertisers and it is always the same story. The advertiser
loves the games but the users don't.

The problem with this strategy is that if you're designing a game for an
advertiser, they are the ones you have to make happy because they provide the
$$$. Users will always be a second priority.

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davidtyleryork
For this strategy to work, it has to fit into why the users love the brand.
For instance, for Sneak King (the Burger King XBox game), the game fit in with
what the brand's audience found cool and funny, and that was key to its
success.

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wccrawford
So their only solution is to move the intrusive ads to being part of
achievements, and thus cheapening them in the eyes of the players?

Sorry, but in my eyes, that's actually worse.

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davidtyleryork
Well, that's Kiip's solution, but I think it's an elegant one. Beats pop-over
ads anyway.

Honestly, I think the game industry should be looking for other ways to
monetize their content.

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melvinng
I'm there are much better solutions out there, the gaming industry has always
been quite good at this.

Remember how we fixed pirating of games? By making levels non archievable if
you are using a pirated version.

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sukuriant
See, I thought companies reduced (you can't stop) piracy of games by making
their content so awesome that people wanted to pay for the game. Examples
include Valve and Blizzard's lineaup.

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anonymoushn
Actually, Blizzard is reducing piracy by requiring you to connect to their
servers to play the game and sending an army of lawyers after anyone who
attempts to create their own servers. Most of the content in StarCraft II
disappears the moment you aren't connected to BNet, and what was left over
disappears 30 days later. Diablo 3 will not work at all unless you are
connected to BNet, and WoW is an MMORPG. S2 has taken a similar approach:
their game does nothing unless you can connect to their servers.

I'm not sure what Valve's approach has been. Does it also involves reducing
the quality of the games offered by not including LAN play?

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TapMeJoshua
Josh from Tap.Me here. We are taking a game design approach to solve this
problem in a no-popup or banner ad way. More Google AdSense. Here is why we
are doing it right: <http://tap.me/wp/2011/05/game-flow-and-in-game-
advertising/>

We think the players should have the fun they are there to have and will
appreciate it when brands add value to that experience vs. get in their way.

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jff
An ad in the comments of an article about how annoying ads in games are. And
the article itself turns out to be a sales pitch at the end. Is this... is
this double-irony?

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TapMeJoshua
Just letting readers know about our option in the space. There are few
comments about how no one is taken an adSense approach to how in-game ads work
and I wanted to let people know that we are.

Yes it's ironic ;).

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chgriffin
Strange to me that people are talking about better ways to serve ads in games
and apps instead of alternative revenue streams to ads. Ads suck no matter how
you position them in your app.

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jcfrei
Frankly I don't really see why the article focused on mobile games. The
argument against in-game ads being distractions can be applied to advertising
in general: billboards on the highway, commercials during tv shows, newspapers
filled with page long ads, etc.

however kipp does sound like a good idea - but it might require heavy changes
from developers to their game mechanics.

~~~
Splines
I don't mind the subversive TV advertisements - the can of coke in the
bedroom, or the kid playing Xbox while their parents try to talk to them.
What's really irritating is when the show comes to a complete halt for what
amounts to a product demo (my wife watches Bones and the WP7 bits really
bugged me).

Ubisoft has tried in-game advertisements with several of their Tom Clancy
games, and its just about as bad. Yes, I'm going through a casino, turn a
corner and there's 5 posters on the wall for Prince of Persia. Riiiiiight.

On the flip-side, I wonder if gun makers have any sort of deals with
developers - any teenage boy can probably rattle off the names of 10 different
machine guns. The same goes for car brands and Gran Turismo/Forza.

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davidtyleryork
"On the flip-side, I wonder if gun makers have any sort of deals with
developers - any teenage boy can probably rattle off the names of 10 different
machine guns." haha oh wow, that's an eye-opening comment. Could be on to
something

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kleiba
Is "...is broken" the new "...considered harmful"?

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davidtyleryork
There's a pretty big difference between the two. Broken means it doesn't work
the way it's intended to work.

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sscheper
I don't get why it's broken? Any numbers/data to share? Why does Angry Birds
contain ads if they're broken? Honestly, not trying to be a dick, just trying
to understand the problem.

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TapMeJoshua
These guys make plenty of cash with those ads. The bigger problem is that it
is one of the only options they have and it comes with the price tag of some
users complaining about the experience.

