Amobee about ad-funded content

November 8th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | No Comments »

Amobee Media Systems have put up a press release at earth times in which they discus the success rate of advert gaming. They have researched ad funded software versus full price on various operator decks and discovered that for every one full price sale, the ad funded version get’s downloaded fifty times. Even though the consumption is 50 times higher, revenues for the developer seem to be only four times higher. This can mean a few things; The consumers download a lot of games, but don’t really play them or the games in the portfolio aren’t played as much as a full price game due to the fact that the consumer might get bored more easy by the ad’s in comparison to a consumer who has an ad free version of the game. Nevertheless, in the end it earns more money!

“There’s a limit to how much we can expect consumers to continuously increase their spend on new content services,” said Eden Zoller, Principal Analyst with Ovum’s Consumer Practice. “This has the potential to impact the growth of data ARPU, which is critical in markets where voice ARPU is declining. In this context driving revenues from mobile advertising is important, but you will only succeed if ads are relevant and contextual – and permission-based.”

Zohar Levkovitz, CEO, Amobee Media Systems, said: “Mobile is the last remaining medium in which the user bears the full weight of payment – a situation that will ultimately stifle growth. Ad-funding the mobile business has the potential to create new revenue streams for operators and content providers, and to deliver an innovative, targeted and measurable advertising channel for brands. Yet consumer acceptance is the key to success, and we firmly believe that the subscriber must see a concrete benefit in terms of the cost and quality of mobile content.”

For mobile games, Amobee doesn’t work with ad wrapping like Greystripe does, but they work with an API. This does mean more work for the developer as special builds have to be created, however it also means that ads are shown during loading periods and other idle moments inside the game. The system allows the users to directly initiate transactions from inside the game.

Karl Woods, Vice President Sales and Marketing at Kiloo, said: “Amobee-ready games will dramatically increase the number of downloads through subsidized games, helping generate new revenues. The ease and simplicity of integrating The Amobee Media System and the intelligence generated on user behavior, for example number of game plays after download, average length of time spent on a level and on an ad, or level reached, provides us with the ability for deep user analysis and the ability to create better games.”