作者：Diana LaGattuta

过去8年我一直在尝试手机广告工作。我看到行业不断地尝试各种模式，希望找到适合手机广告的那一种，以及能将手机广告水平提升至网页的办法。

在摸索的过程中，手机行业四处寻找答案：运营商级媒体、算法、给大品牌做的带有华丽登录页面的昂贵广告、位置识别和程序媒体购买的平台。手机公司仍在设法通过扩大手机广告的规模来挣钱。

为此，它们已经通过交易大量炮制标准横幅广告，也就是压低弥补少量点击率的价钱。对于广告技术公司来说，这是好事；但对独立开发者就未必了，因为他们得不到百万次的广告曝光量，却仍然要持续经营。

同时，手机游戏公司一直在默默地改造手机广告和赢利策略，甚至在赢利方面超过规模大实力强的发行商。以下是手机游戏公司在探索过程中总结出的经验：

mobile gaming(from venturebeat)

没人喜欢横幅广告

除了靠标准显示广告发家的广告技术公司，没有人喜欢屏幕底部那个小小的矩形图案——横幅广告。这种广告最大的失败是，人们不点击它。

可以说，0.5%的点击率应该归功于拇指，而不是消费者。另外，应用开发者讨厌自己美观的产品被这种已经变成“必要之祸”的东西（即广告）所拖累。确实有更好的办法来营销广告，而不是靠那些我们的眼睛已经习惯性忽略掉的横幅广告。游戏开发者已经找到所谓的“更好的办法”了。

通过本地广告机制如应用发现墙、植入式广告和将游戏与插页式广告相给合等方法，手机游戏开发者已经将广告含蓄地融入到玩家体验中。这些更富新意的方式不只是让消费者点击它，还让他们拿出行动。

消费者接收本地广告和下载广告应用的比例通常比非本地广告的高350%。

免费模式改变一切

再也没有人乐意花钱买应用了。

觉察到这股趋势，游戏公司在第一时间就领悟了靠免费模式挣钱的艺术。在免费模式下，玩家可以免费玩游戏，但需要用虚拟货币购买游戏内物品，比如扩仓库或买武器。开发者就是靠免费模式避免与玩家不愿花钱的心理产生冲突。至于奖励性广告，也就是用虚拟货币奖励接收广告的玩家。例如，通过观看广告、注册试用、下载手机优惠券或下载应用等，玩家可以获得虚拟物品作为奖励。

这就不得不让我们产生疑问：因为奖励而接受广告的消费者与那些不是因为奖励而接受广告的消费者一样有价值吗？我的回答是，无论是线上还是线下，奖励消费者试用产品已经被证明是一种有效的营销手段。

奖励性广告的另一个优势是，消费者的接受度更高。这是因为消费者可以得到广告赞助内容的经济价值，觉得是一种双赢。消费者往往不会意识到他们所享受的免费内容实际上是由其他人在买帐，他们认为广告是一种干扰。谁能忘记当谣传Facebook将收费时，用户的怒火？

因为奖励性广告，广告到内容的交易变得更明显了。

关注大品牌，但直接的广告商才是重点

在21岁以前，美国人在电子游戏上花的平均时间是1万个小时。任何熟悉《纽约客》的Malcolm Gladwell（游戏邦注：畅销书《异数》（Outliers: The Story of Success）作者Malcolm Gladwell指出，想在各领域脱颖而出、成为卓越不凡的佼佼者，至少得累积1成小时的专注练习。他将这个结果称为“一万小时定律”）的人都知道，1万个小时（也就是做一份每周40小时的工作5年）足以让人掌握任何一种技能。按这种逻辑，我们就明白了第一代游戏神童是怎么来的了。意料之中，一个围绕设计行为改变游戏的小产业已经出现了。

手机游戏和其他娱乐应用才刚开始成为大品牌的强力广告工具。

在那些年轻的游戏受众正处于决定申请什么信用卡、买什么车或用什么刮胡刀的时候，大品牌希望向他们伸出橄榄枝。大品牌把量身定制的品牌游戏作为一种获取这类消费者的工具，如Teen Vogue的游戏《Teen Vogue Me Girl》、迪士尼的《Temple Run：Brave》和麦当劳的《Mouth Off》。

虽然大品牌不断渗入手机游戏领域，但大多数交叉推广仍然是由应用开发者完成的。在快速积累受众方面已经颇有收获的应用包括旅游、约会和商务相关的手机应用。

广告始终需要将艺术与技术完美结合。从技术上讲，我们在预测性分析目标受众方面已经取得长足的进步；但从艺术上讲，我们现在应该加把劲了，好好设计本地应用，使用户体验成为应用流量的一部分。手机游戏行业现在正在推进这股创意潮流。

我们应该吸取的经验是，我们不仅可以做出比横幅广告更好的东西，而且必须做出比它更好的东西。对于广告商，本地应用一定会增加广告的价值；对应用开发者，手机必将成为一种成功的商业渠道。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

3 things the mobile industry can learn about advertising from gaming

by Diana LaGattuta

On March 20, we rebranded our company to NativeX, a name that reflects the type of native in-app advertising we provide. As I expected, the evening of our launch, I received a message from a friend who works for a mobile ad technology firm.

It went something like this: “Congrats! But you know native doesn’t scale, right?”

I’ve spent the past eight years of my career trying to make mobile advertising work. I’ve watched the industry grasp at many paradigms while searching for the one that would finally work for mobile advertising, the solution that would elevate mobile to the level of the web.

During this search, the mobile industry has looked jut about everywhere for the answer: in carrier-grade media, algorithmic targeting, expensive ads with flashy landing pages for big brands, location awareness, and programmatic media buying platforms. Companies have tried to figure out how to make a buck by scaling the hell out of mobile.

During this, they’ve churned more standard banners through exchanges, which are bid down to the penny to compensate for puny click-through rates. This is good for ad tech companies, but not so good for indie developers who don’t generate billions of impressions but still need to run a business.

Meanwhile, mobile gaming apps have been quietly reinventing mobile advertising and out-monetizing even the large, well-established publishers. Here are a few things the mobile games companies have worked out along the way:

Nobody likes banner ads

Apart from ad technology companies that are built from standard display ad, nobody appreciates that little rectangle at the bottom of the screen: the banner ad. The problem is that people just don’t click.

It’s safe to say we can attribute more of that 0.5 percent click-through rate (and that’s generous) to fat thumbs than to consumer interest. Additionally, app developers hate ruining their beautiful products with what has become a necessary evil. There’s a better way to monetize an app than with that small banner our eyes have been trained to overlook — and game developers have found it.

Mobile game developers have integrated advertising seamlessly into the user experience through native ad mechanics like app discovery walls, product placement, and incorporating game characters into the offer experience with native interstitials. With these more innovative methods, the consumers not only click, but they act.

They download promoted apps and engage with native ads at a rate that’s often more than 350 percent higher than engagement with nonnative ads.

Freemium changes everything

Nobody wants to pay for apps anymore.

Seeing this trend, gaming companies were the first to master the art of making money from free apps with the freemium business model. By offering their games for free and then offering in-app purchases with virtual currency, which players can use to buy bigger barns or weapons, game developers have circumvented the need for pay to play. With a rewarded ad unit, the consumer engages with an ad to earn virtual currency rather than buying it. For example, a consumer can earn virtual goods by viewing an ad, signing up for a free trial, downloading a mobile coupon, or downloading an app.

This leaves us asking: Is a customer who is rewarded to engage with an ad as valuable as one who is not? I would say that rewarding consumers for sampling your product is a proven marketing tactic both online and offline.

Another benefit of rewarded ad units is that consumers more readily accept them. This is because the consumer can see the financial benefit of advertiser-sponsored content, and it feels like a win-win. Customers often do not draw the connection that someone else is paying the bill for the free content they’re enjoying, and they see advertising as an intrusion. Yet who can forget the outrage Facebook users expressed when rumors flew around that they might be asked to pay a subscription fee?

With rewarded ad units, the transaction of advertising for content is more apparent.

The brands will come, but direct-response advertisers are key

The average American spends 10,000 hours playing digital games before they turn 21. Anyone familiar with The New Yorker‘s Malcolm Gladwell and his work knows that 10,000 hours (five years of a 40-hour work week) is the required time it takes to master anything. By this logic, we might be seeing the first generation of teenage gaming experts. It is no surprise that a cottage industry has emerged around designing behavioral changing games.

And mobile games and other entertainment apps are just beginning to become a powerful ad engagement tool for big brands.

Big brands want to reach this affluent young audience of gaming masters when they’re at the point of deciding which credit card to get, car to buy, or razor to use. The brands are already creating tailor-made branded games as a means of reaching this desirable segment, like Teen Vogue’s game Teen Vogue Me Girl and Disney’s Brave-branded version of Temple Run or McDonald’s Mouth Off game.

As big brands continue to infiltrate mobile gaming, most cross-promotion is still done between app developers. Other apps with a vested interest in building an audience quickly include mobile-first apps in travel, dating and commerce.

Advertising has always required the right mix of art and science. We have made huge strides in predictive analytics for better targeting on the back end. Now it is time to elevate the craftsmanship on the front end to design native ad experiences that become part of the flow of the app. The mobile game industry is driving this creative innovation and scaling it.

The lesson to be learned is that we, as an industry, can do better than banners. We have to do better than banners. Native promises to improve value for the advertiser and also turns mobile into a successful business channel for app developers.(source:venturebeat)