Mobile advertising provider Greystripe says that German game publisher HandyGames will begin using its AdWRAP system to deliver in-game ads to a number of its titles. But it’s not just in-game mobile ads that’s notable, HandyGames will make the titles free to users and generate revenues just from the advertising.
This is definitely an interesting application of ad-supported mobile content, an area that’s going to boom as operators and content providers figure out that in many cases, the revenues they can generate from advertising outstrip what they can make from subscriptions. However, the in-game angle raised a few questions in my mind: if a game or application is marketed as “free”, how do you handle the possibility of data charges serving ads to it might generate?
I put that to Greystripe CEO Michael Chang, who replied that users are notified when they first download the game, and before the game connects to the network to download ads — which he says occur roughly every 10 game plays. Multiple ads are downloaded each time and stored on the device, with the typical update between 12 and 16k. He emphasizes they’re careful about these things out of respect for the user experience and game play — realizing that burning customers on data charges doesn’t do them any favors at all.
There’s some opportunity for abuse here by unscrupulous vendors, but the problem should be relatively self-policing in that it’s rather difficult for someone to directly profit from ripping off users. But could mobile spyware and adware become a problem?
[tags]mobile, mobile marketing, mobile advertising, in-game ads, greystripe, adwrap[/tags]
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