Lenco Mobile Social Gaming
Social games have become so wildly popular that Zynga’s Farmville, Cityville and Mafia Wars are becoming mainstream names often bandied about in the media. Often, the first notifications one receives when joining a social network are from these viral games so the logical evolution has been for the companies that make social games to port the games to mobile. Zynga announced plans for Android apps for Farmville (62 mil active users in Facebook as of Sept, 2010) and Mafia Wars (45.5 mil active users as of August 2010), two of their most popular games.
So the space is heating up not just for game developers but for advertisers as well. A recent study released by Juniper Research shows that a ten fold increase in ad spend is in the works by 2015. We’re talking $87 mil in ad spend rising to nearly 900 mil by then. As far as global mobile gaming revenue, the study predicts that revenues from download fees charged by game developers to the consumer and in-game virtual goods could yield ten times that. The whole space could hit $11 billion in revenue by 2015.
Logically, game players prefer free games and don’t mind the ads as it’s the path of least resistance. This freemium model has been the most successful so far thanks to app store resources like Getjar which according to info on its own site is “the world’s second largest app store with over 1 billion downloads to date, second only to the Apple App Store.” Apple lead the charge early in the in-game mobile advertising space with their robust iAd platform. The novelty of the iPads, coupled with the interactivity and ability to display video on the ads has yielded a higher response rate for advertisers.
Angry Birds by Rovio Mobile has been a smash hit on the iPhone, so much so that Rovio is concocting its own one-tap payment system called “Bad Piggy Bank,” slated to release later in the year. Conceptually, one-touch payments work by allowing the consumer to be charged on their cell phone bill rather than enter in a credit card. Angry Birds has 50 million active users who spend a collective 200 milion minutes per day in the game.
Social gaming in and of itself, is highly disruptive to the traditional video game world of game consoles, physical games and even the nature of questing. Ad spend and revenue will naturally increase and new channels for income will be tested out for the mobile operating systems, game developers and advertisers. To learn more about social gaming, visit Lenco Mobile.
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