Americans like to play games on their mobiles phones. And the fact that they don’t like to pay for those games should open up opportunities for marketers who are willing to pick up the tab for those games through ads.
Those are some of the findings of a new report produced by marketing research firm eMarketer entitled “Mobile Games: Consumers Don’t Pay to Play”. While games played over mobile handsets display some of the strongest engagement metrics of any mobile content category, the report says, that involvement doesn’t mean users are willing to spend more to access games, either from their wireless carriers or from third-party publishers.
The report projects that spending on mobile games worldwide will produce $7 billion in revenue by 2012, up from $1.9 billion in 2007. Approximately $1.27 billion of that 2012 revenue will be in ad-supported games, eMarketer finds, up from $97 million last year. In the same time frame, the global audience who pay directly for mobile games will jump from 155 million players in 2007 to 500 million.
The eMarketer study includes as ad revenue both ads placed within the games and ads placed on mobile gaming Web sites where users can download games.
In the U.S. eMarketer projects, mobile game spending will grow from $344 million in 2007 to $1.15 billion in 2012. Ad-supported mobile games will account for $206 million in mobile game revenue by 2012, up from $17 million in 2007. The paying U.S. audience for mobile games will about double in that time, from 2007’s 23 million players to 57 million in 2012.
Both the worldwide and U.S. audiences paying directly for mobile games will be far outnumbered by those who play either a game pre-loaded onto their handset by the manufacturer or “sideloaded”—bought for a PC and then transferred into the cell phone.
Mobile games are relatively expensive compared to other types of mobile content such as music and video, and unlike those other categories, they can often be consumed only on the handset and not transferred to another device. That price premium might open up opportunities for marketers to underwrite the game cost to consumers in exchange for some relevant in-game marketing, the eMarketer report says.
While the U.S. will never be able to match the raw gamer numbers of markets such as China and India or the high per-capita consumption of Japan, that doesn’t mean marketers should overlook mobile gaming opportunities in this country, writes report author and eMarketer senior analyst John du Pre Gauntt.
“The U.S. mobile gaming market exists inside the world’s largest interactive advertising economy,” he says. “Combining that fact with rapid changes in the short term surrounding advanced handsets and more unlimited mobile data plans should cause marketers to look at U.S. mobile gaming in a new light.”
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