Greystripe proves effectiveness of in-game advertising
And New Line Cinema's The Golden Compass is one of the first to reap the rewards
It seems that some of you out there are lying about mobile advertising. Though almost everyone we ever speak to claims to hate it with a passion, a report conducted recently by ad-funded game guru, Greystripe, and research firm, Dynamic Logic, confirms that mobile advertising is very effective.
In a case study featured in the report, a mobile advertising campaign for New Line Cinema's The Golden Compass (broadcast during load times for certain mobile games) outperformed a typical online advertising campaign by 52 per cent in terms of brand awareness. Not only that but the end result was a 9.5 per cent increase in interest in seeing the film among all respondents.
It may be quite dry sounding stuff but the implications for mobile gamers are potentially seismic. The ad-funded game model has inspired quite a bit of debate since it first emerged and now that it is starting to prove itself as a genuinely compelling model for both the consumer and the publisher, we could start seeing many more ad-funded games, particularly of the big franchise variety.
It isn't that far fetched to imagine that games based on movies may start to opt for the ad-funded route much more often, where the game is essentially a part of the advertising campaign for the the film. Obviously there are good and bad implications of such a future to consider but, either way, it's further proof (if it were needed) that ad-funded gaming is anything but a phase.