The use of advertising to fund mobile services will significantly increase the consumption of mobile content and generate a new revenue stream for operators, according to live trial results released by Amobee Media Systems.
Aggregated data from multiple trials with tier 1 operators in multiple markets shows that for every person that paid to download mobile content, up to 50 took the 'ad-funded' version in return for accepting advertising.
The advertising revenues can be worth as much as four times the equivalent download value.
"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."
For ad-funding the mobile games business, Amobee provides games developers with a small SDK called HAPI (Handset Application programming Interface) which can be integrated and activated in minutes making the games 'Amobee ready' and conditioned to take ads.
Insertions are served to a subscriber's screen during idle time in the game, for example between levels or during loading. The subscriber then has the option of engaging with the advertising brand to receive information, even initiate a transaction, or can opt not to view the ad and to go straight the next level.
Karl Woods, Vice President Sales and Marketing at Kiloo, a mobile entertainment publisher that has integrated Amobee's HAPI into its games, 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 behaviour, 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."
Posted to the site on 9th November 2006
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/20324.php