Playing for Money

Sean Cronin, CEO of Selatra, explains how companies can use games to their advantage as part of a mobile marketing campaign

The Internet delivered a much-needed shot in the arm to the advertising industry. While TV viewers are dropping, online eyeballs are growing rapidly. According to figures released by the Advertising Association, online UK advertising spend rose to 597m in 2004, as the medium closed in on radio advertising in terms of market share.
Both consumers and clients were losing a little faith in traditional advertising, so when the Internet arrived, it opened up a world of new opportunities for companies eager to get their message across, heralding such new terms as Banners and Skyscrapers and breathing new life back into the traditional press, TV and radio and direct mail sectors.

Brave new world
When the mobile phone was conceived, marketers were quick to spot its potential. The brave new world of m-commerce beckoned, promising a mini-revolution, mirroring the boom secured from the Internet and offering to satisfy both the ever-increasing demands of corporates and a more savvy, sophisticated and spam-wary consumer.
One of the potential win-win scenarios marketers touted at the time as a life-changing scenario was targeted advertising that would interact with us seamlessly as we went about our daily business. We would come within a mile or so of a fast food restaurant at lunchtime, or a supermarket during our normal shopping hours, and our mobile would bleep with targeted offers matched closely to our desires. This hasnt happened.
Marketers quickly realised that a simple repetition of Web style advertising wouldnt appeal to small-screen users, where space is at a premium in a pixel-challenged display. WAP pages can only cram in so much before becoming cluttered.
The mobile world takes its lead from Asia, where the market is at least 18 months ahead of Europe, and the good news is that mobile phones have mercifully remained bleep-free from discounted burgers and beans coupons and thankfully, annoying banners are not prevalent just yet.
But there are developments in Asia that advertisers, media planners and marketers in Europe planning future integrated marketing campaigns should take note of now, because they will provide pointers to where the focus may need to be in 2008.
According to the market statistics, the fasting growing sector in the mobile market is gaming. Visiongains new wireless gaming report says that revenue from wireless games is set to multiply by as much as 25 times or more over the next five years. A recent report from Informa Telecoms & Media placed the value of the mobile games market at $2.6 billion (1.4 billion) in 2005.
Screen Digest suggests that 80% of the games downloaded worldwide were in Korea and Japan. Its report also claimed that while the mobile gaming market is forecast to grow by around 50% in Asia over the next couple of years, it is expected to grow at ten times that rate in Western Europe and North America as we catch up.

Imaginative perspective
There are early signs that we are beginning to approach mobile gaming from a more imaginative perspective in Western Europe too and it is the large media corporations who are leading the way.
ITV has introduced a mobile content portal, following on from Channel 4, which launched one earlier this year. The BBC has produced its first mobile phone video game, based on the hit spy drama Spooks, while The Times has brought cult gaming craze SuDoku to mobile phones, with an offer promoted through the newspaper. Every time the game starts up, players are reminded to buy the print edition of the newspaper. These early green shoots are but pointers of what is to come.
Because brands face an audience that is fragmenting, many Asian companies are going one step further, and building entire marketing campaigns with mobile gaming as the centrepiece, in an effort to get their message across to a technically aware audience. This model is achieving great success in Asia, but one crucial component in its success is pricing. The lower prices the consumer pays for games is fuelling the phenomenal growth of mobile gaming in Asia, but some companies are going one step further and giving the games away for free.
Take an unfashionable motorbike brand, for example, that wishes to reach out to the 18-25 year old market. Working with companies like Selatra, the company can source, re-brand and enhance an existing game engine, tapping into its core market demographic at a reasonable cost. The motorbike company offers the game free to potential players (its target market). In return, players agree to watch adverts while the game is downloading or in between levels while the next part of the game is loading.  The games are thoughtfully bannerised and carefully-targeted product placement is pre-sold.
Offering free demos, creating communities through leagues and tournaments, and enabling a multi-player facility are all methods that are being used to enhance and extend the lifecycle of this promotion. The brand can become fashionable by association with an appealing game, and sales to a new demographic become possible.
Because the mobile phone is a personal space, and 100% targeted, it is extremely valuable to advertisers. Thats why many companies in Asia are running with carefully thought out mobile gaming campaigns, working as a core element within their integrated marketing plans. So the good news is that the long awaited advertising boom from the m-commerce revolution appears to be on its way. The fleet-of-foot among us will already be examining the possibilities now, to take advantage of this next wave of opportunities.