I found myself playing a mobile game like most of the population who own a smart phone and suddenly the dreaded “un-skippable” ad popped up. With their trademark fake exit button that takes you to the app store all the way to the countdown timer that teases you with the possibility of being able to exit out of the ad sooner than you thought and grant you with the sweet relief that you so crave. During this process I felt like it just reinforced my hatred towards ads like this but then I got to thinking. Have I ever been influenced by ads like these in the past and just how effective are they compared to other advertising mediums? So, I placed my marketing hat firmly on my head and did some investigating.
So firstly, I discovered that there are two distinct types of mobile in-game ads. The first is the classic un-skippable ad that plays systematically throughout the gameplay and then there is the second type known as “opt-in rewarded ads”. To fully understand what the distinction was I had to start my research right here. It turns out that I personally am a sucker for opt-in reward ads and, if I can be so forward, I would say the same for much of the population. They are essentially an incentive program whereby a game gives you the option to watch an advertisement and as a reward you get extra lives, coins or other gifts from the game so you can advance your playing experience. I cannot tell you the amount of occasions that I have casually pressed on this option so I could continue playing when unbeknownst to me, I was slowly being influenced by the sheer volume of advertising material I was consuming.
Lucy Koch wrote a piece for ‘The E-Marketer’ discussing how the US consumer appreciates in-game ads and how they respond to the different types and the results speak for themselves. Millennials, parents and people with a high income all had large amounts of the people saying that they would prefer opt-in reward ads over “interstitial” ads or would likely engage with an ad with the promise of a reward. This now feeds into the question of the effectiveness of this advertising medium.
Vice president of Marketing at Tapjoy, mobile ad and app monetisation company, Emily Robinson stated that consumers actually appreciate the ability to advance through the game and recognise the value of the exchange which, if I am being honest, was not the original response that I was expecting. I think, in my mind, the annoyance came from the repetition and the thought that these ads were nothing but an eyesore and even had a negative effect on my opinions of a brand or a game and in a sense, this is not an incorrect statement. A recent study done by eMarketer found that in the US alone more than 83 million people used ad blockers, a 32% increase from 2017 which does suggest that the general attitude towards interstitial ads in mobile games is overwhelmingly negative.
So, what I have taken from my findings thus far I that mobile advertisements are evolving away from the traditional forms that were most effective when mobile games were fairly new. For an advertisement to be effective, there needs to be a trade between consumer and brand. After this, the simple mechanics of repetition of a brand or product, will continue to have success in the form of in game advertising. Unfortunately, I will always be one of the people who watches an ad for more lives in a game... does that make me a sucker or a standard consumer?
References:
L. Koch, E-Marketer, 'Mobile In-Game Advertising', 2019
E. Robinson, Tapjoy, 'Mobile Advertising - What is it and how does it work?', 2019