Quick Summary: Read about a new brand-centric business model for mobile advergaming.
At yesterday’s Mobile Monday Mumbai session, as I watched Jump Games CEO Salil Bhargava present a case for mobile advergaming, I kept asking myself why it didn’t (yet) make sense for Indian marketers.
Later, as Salil was joined by Anant Rangaswami from Campaign India magazine and Nidhi Taparia from Tata Indicom for a panel discussion moderated by VeerChand Bothra from Netcore Solutions, I actually asked them –
So, why exactly should mobile advergaming become an essential part of my media plan?
As I expected, the discussion quickly turned to how marketers expect too much from digital media.
However, since I think of myself as a digital media evangelist — I want mobile/ online advertising to work — I told myself to not think about all the reasons mobile advergaming won’t work for me and instead think about the set of conditions under which it would work for me.
The basic problem with the present developer-centric (or operator-centric, but certainly not brand-centric) business model for mobile advergaming is that all the risks are borne by the brand. The developer gets a development fees and the operator gets a hosting fee — but nobody gives the brand a commitment on downloads and plays.
I would love to do an advergame (or ten) if the developer and the operator are willing to share the risk of “what if nobody downloads/ plays the game?” with me. The developer develops a new game for me, the operator hosts it and promotes it aggressively and I only pay on the basis of downloads and plays. If nobody downloads/ plays the game, I don’t lose out — and why should I? — but if 500000 users download the game, I’m happy to pay up and the developer and the operator make a killing. This is basically a cost-per-action (CPA) model for advergames — it has worked elsewhere and there’s no reason it won’t work for advergames.
So, are there any takers for my brand-centric business model for mobile advergaming?
