在关于“如何决定是否在你的游戏中投放广告？”的探讨中，我们比较了广告和微交易对游戏赢利的作用。与那个问题类似，我们自然而然地想到了另一个问题——儿童应用应该靠广告赢利吗？

Stuart Dredge（《卫报》记者）

最近我采访了许多可靠的业内人士，他们都预测在儿童游戏中的IAP被严格取缔后，广告将成为儿童游戏唯一可行的收益渠道——但难题就是，如何确保广告不超过年龄限制、不违反儿童在线隐私保护法案等。

成人游戏依靠IAP，而儿童游戏就要依靠广告？真是有意思的趋势，我们拭目以待吧。

Jas Purewal（Osborne Clarke的律师）

无论是IAP还是广告，都面临法律风险。美国和欧洲对在线市场的态度都很强硬，严格地限制应用收集儿童，特别是13岁以下的儿童的数据。相关的法律法规已经存在，甚至在某些案例中已经有游戏公司被高额罚款。

监管部门已经把IAP提上议事日程，英国在这方面走在前列。我们还不能确定结果如何，但无论如何，有关部门至少会要求“引导”和限制未成年市场的IAP。

在儿童游戏中使用广告和IAP的现象不会消失（当然不会），但会越来越困难（游戏邦注：就像几乎所有其他儿童产品的一直以来的赢利困难一样）。因此，在探讨是否/何时取缔游戏中的广告时，法律法规是一个重要的考虑因素。

Andy Payne（Appynation首席执行官）

英国公平贸易局现在已经在调研此事了。因为我参与了协商，所以我现在不能发表看法，但我可以说，为了防止商家向未成年人蓄意推销，这个问题必须在应用生产者、平台和监管部门之间达成共识。

对于结果如何，我有许多设想，但仅仅是设想。但儿童应用的广告问题现在已经引起英国政府的高度重视，甚至欧盟委员会也有所关注了。

Stuart Dredge（《卫报》记者）

这确实是儿童应用开发者面临的一大问题。（很多）父母不购买付费应用。他们越来越害怕IAP（甚至是并不过分的IAP），他们也质疑广告。开发者的处境是进退两难。

最近，芬达和麦当劳都各自推出儿童应用/游戏，显然有些大品牌也被推到风尖浪口了……

Richard Firminger（Flurry欧洲总经理）

“大品牌合作”面临的挑战与所有本地广告和赞助一样，是不可避免的。

在这方面，我有密切联系。他们抱怨交货期太长、复杂的协议严重影响内部资源和更新周期、交易规模比较低（几百几千，还不到百万）。这类商业发展困难——–一般来说广告商只愿意做一次，如《马达加斯加3》和《会说话的汤姆猫》，Samsung和Rovio的做法也证明了这一点。

因为以上讨论似乎很有意义，所以我们在儿童媒体大会期间又继续这个论题。

Nicholas Lovell（Gamesbrief总监）

我最后收到了一封邮件，向我咨询如何让儿童应用赢利。那封邮件的开头说“显然，针对未成年的IAP是不道德的”。我没有回复。在一个家长不预付应用、不喜欢儿童向的广告、因某些恶劣案例而把所有IAP一棍子打死的世界里，还有什么赢利出路？

Harry Holmwood（Marvelous AQL欧洲首席执行官）

我认为这是一人相当棘手的问题，这也是至少现在我回避未成年向应用的主要原因。

目前，大多数能存活下来的儿童应用都是已经成功打出品牌的、推出实体产品（如玩具等）的。但那太困难了，是大部分开发者可望而不可及的目标。现在，儿童的IAP（或购买应用）能力和实际可支配的钱之间，有严重的脱节。家长可能乐意给他们的孩子硬币和零钱，但凡是有心的父母都不会给孩子信用卡，且大多数小孩手头上也没有可用于支付应用的iTunes卡。为了购买应用，他们不得不去游戏商店交现金，这给他们的消费造成巨大麻烦。

我认为，让孩子有自己的电子钱包将越来越被接受。一旦这个观念普及，我们也许会看到儿童大量消费IAP或购买应用。但以我自己带孩子的经验看，他们非常不愿意在任何数字产品上花钱——可以免费玩的东西太多了，即使他们的帐户上有一张iTunes卡，他们也不会消费IAP。这可能是一个更大的问题——新一代人太浮躁了，没耐心，再加上无数的娱乐产品分散他们的注意力。我认为成功的儿童应用应该挖掘“操场文化”——孩子在这种小型、封闭的“社交网络”中更有可能收获玩游戏的快乐，无论是自己玩还是与伙伴一起。

Eric Seufert（Gamefounders顾问）

对此，我提供不了任何深刻的见解，因为我没有孩子，但我认为这一点引出一个更大的问题——泛泛地猜测焦点人群如何使用产品而不做检验那些假设，是无益于满足消费者的。“看门人/娱乐消费者”的范式并不复杂，我认为大多数开发者都能理解。类似的，我很质疑许多开发者有意通过引诱儿童少量但多次消费来积累收益。所以也许儿童游戏的IAP还没有产生有效的、可持续的先例的原因就是：1）未成年人太容易厌烦了，他们的留存期短得不能让免费模式生效；或者2）自己有孩子的开发者还不够多，不理解儿童的想法。

Anthony Pecorella（Kongregate虚拟产品制作人）

我认为“儿童游戏”的叫法可能太泛了一点，应该按年龄和目标（教育类和娱乐类）细分一下。对于小孩子，我认为付费和可扩展的游戏也许更值得开发，特别是如果游戏还是教育向的。最近，我们看到付费游戏如《Toca》的各种教育活动排名，虽然有些简陋。我已经看到一种有意义的教育模式了，也就是免费下载但父母可以购买额外的模块。这种模式显然是针对家长的：报告各个科目的使用时间、孩子的强弱项、进步情况等。使父母深层介入游戏过程，确实是一个可以向家长推销的卖点。如果游戏确实是教育向的，我认为家长会更乐意在你的游戏上花钱。

如果你的目标受众是已经形成金钱观念、自己有零花钱的少年，那么我认为传统的免费/IAP模式更有效，只要你能提供一个由家长执行的零花钱系统。家长可以预购买大量“零花钱”，由系统按天或周自动发放给未成年的孩子。但要使这种系统生效，游戏设备上必须有“家长模式”——否则，考虑到首先下载游戏的恰好就是孩子，我认为没有什么合理的方式能禁止他们消费。上述提到的可持续的模式确实管用，不过赢利显然比不过更强劲的IAP模式。

当然，无论是什么模式，你都会限制你的总体每玩家收益，因为你的受众被限制了。在应用总收益排行榜的前25名中，儿童应用通常呆不久。所以我认为采用这种模式时，你的期望值应该现实一点。如果你有热情又做得好，那么我敢肯定你的工作室可以维持下去，并且收益不会太差，但你不能靠儿童游戏成为另一个“Supercell”或“GungHo”，至少如果你非常讲良心的话。当你开始把目标对准“在应用上大把花钱的儿童”时，你也许应该反思一下你的人生选择了。

Stuart Dredge（《卫报》记者）

在儿童媒体大会上做了45分钟的儿童应用描述后，我抓耳挠腮，甚至不知道从哪里说起。当我放出史努比的69.99英镑的IAP截图时，整个房间里的人都震惊了，尽管我认为这距离形成一种针对儿童应用的手机广告网络也许还差十万八千里。在此之前还需要更多尝试，在儿童应用中盲目推广标准广告单元/网络并不是理想的做法。

至于另一件事，真是遗憾，我也说尽管你有追求《Puzzle & Dragons》那样的商业成功的抱负，但儿童游戏并不是诞生那种奇迹的地方。也许那也算不上是个问题，《Toca Boca》的赢利佳绩已经维持一段时间了，而且打出了自己的品牌。这个例子算是鼓舞人心吧。或者说，至少产生另外10个“《Toca Boca》”的赢利道路明确了。

Oscar Clark（Applifier倡导者）

我知道有些父母舍得花69美元购买实体产品作为礼物送给孩子，但花相同的钱消费虚拟产品就难了——一直都是这样。我可能会选择花更多钱在游戏上，但很少，除非我确实非常中意那款游戏。但在别人身上花钱就更困难了，不只是我的冷热移情心理的冷酷面在起作用。

确定消费的合适水平使玩家对游戏的印象更好，所有游戏都应该避免造成消费的无底洞，虽然这会限制你的收益潜力。但对我而言，那是好事……我们应该做更好的游戏。在我看来，这种观念是必须的，无论你是想做成人游戏还是儿童游戏。为了提高沉浸感、信任和寿命价值，应该把注意力放在品质上。确保设计能吸引玩家消费，但不能滥用这种赢利策略。如果你能专注于游戏本身的品质和玩家体验，我认为赢利自然就会增长了。

广告定位是一个好思路。我敢说，这不只是对于不以儿童为受众的成年人/赌博市场等服务。尽管我认为针对儿童的手机广告网络也许会面临大量难以应付的法律/商业/政策的问题。

Dylan Collins（页游《Fight my Monster》的执行主管）

在过去两天的儿童媒体大会上，就该话题我已经进行过33次会谈了。

激进的IAP设计将越来越难在儿童手机游戏领域使用，我们的许多大品牌客户都在考虑撤消它。在中短期内，最“安全”的赢利策略是付费广告网络（与合适的合作方）。

广告网络不是理想的游戏赢利渠道。但目前我还没看到什么其他可行的办法。苹果即将推出的儿童分类很好，但只适用于学龄前儿童。他们显然可以用孩子的钱包和一些操作系统层面上的东西解决所有问题，但我不认为这是他们当前的优先工作。人们忽略的重点是：苹果应用商店是一个赢利平台，而不是内容平台。

但基本上，儿童应用市场（和其他平台）是“困难的”。是的，《Toca Boca》是成功的，但它是只个例，并且它的成功证明的是其他东西。

Anthony Pecorella（Kongregate虚拟产品制作人）

是的，我想我忽略了这个领域中最显著的成功：《Skylanders》。它的IAP执行办法显然适合家长孩子们所理解和可以信任的形式：公仔玩偶。它为父母提供了一种监视开支的渠道，但也不防碍孩子多花钱（如果家长认为合适的话）。当然，生产和推广实体玩偶超过大多数应用开发者的能力范围，甚至不容他们考虑，但随着游戏收益突破10亿美元大关，发展壮大的潜力还是有的。

Stuart Dredge（《卫报》记者）

我听说有一些人注意到Rovio的收益比GungHo/Supercell/ King少得多，于是猜测Rovio错失机遇或表现失利了。但今天我突然意识到，Rovio是不是故意没有在IAP上下全力，因为他们的受众中有很多还是小孩子？

我不是说他们就是这么想的，但我确实很想知道是不是这种想法使他们对IAP的执行更加慎重。不过我欢迎其他人指证我的拙见。

另外，我确实希望有人能就家长对此问题的态度做一个详尽的研究。孩子的父母对IAP的接受程度到底是多少？

因为无论任何时候提到“如果父母愿意购买70英镑的玩具，那么70英镑的IAP就没什么错”的观点时，我总是想大喊：“但父母可不这么想。并且他们才是你的顾客！”

但除了在校门口与一些朋友聊天时说说这事，我也拿不出确切的证据。我的直觉（根据非常有限的样本人群）是，不只是内容，许多家长对任何种类的IAP都保持强硬态度，这可能会使开发者感到震惊。

我认为这是媒体的错！

Eric Hautemont（Days of Wonder首席执行官）

我也觉得，Rovio和动视以及越来越少的公司都意识到，手机应用的免费模式狂热不能长久，无论是不是针对儿童……至少长远看来是如此。

甚至对于行业新秀如Supercell，看到他们最近似乎很难保住自己美国应用收益排行榜上的宝座，真是有趣的现象。他们现在应该是在第二名至第四名之间徘徊吧。别看排名差距不大，这背后的收益数量可差得远了。

我知道我的话听起来就是在唱反调，但三年以前当我质疑Facebook社交游戏模式的可持续性时，人们也向我投来相同的怪异眼光。看看那些家伙（比如Zynga）现在的处境吧。（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）

Should you monetise children’s apps with ads?

By Gamesbriefers

13th June

We asked the Gamesbriefers ‘how do you decide whether to put ads in your games?‘. Separate to the discussion about ads vs. microtransactions, a parallel question emerged about how to monetise children’s apps…

Stuart Dredge Journalist at The Guardian

I’ve had a couple of meetings with smart, trusted contacts in recent days where they’ve predicted a walloping great crackdown on IAP in kids’ games, and that advertising is going to offer the only sustainable business model for children’s content – with the challenge being how to ensure the ads are age-appropriate, COPPA-compliant etc.

Adults’ games swing towards IAP, kids’ games swing towards ad-supported? That’d be an interesting trend to watch.

Jas Purewal Lawyer at Osborne Clarke

They’re both just as fraught with legal risk. Both the US and EU are hostile to online marketing to, and data collection from, kids – particularly those under 13. The legal rules against this already exist and in some cases have already been applied against games companies with significant fines ensuing.

On the IAP side, this is climbing up the regulators’ agenda, with the UK leading the charge so far. We don’t yet know exactly what the results of that will be but on any view it will lead to at least guidance, and possibly restrictions, on IAP marketed to kids.

Using advertising and IAP in kids’ games isn’t going to disappear (far from it), but it will become more complicated (just as monetisation of nearly all other kids’ products has become over time). Regulation will therefore become a factor in Nicholas’ question of if/when to turn off advertising in a game.

Andy Payne CEO of Appynation

The OFT are investigating this right now. As I am involved in that consultation, I cannot comment right now, but suffice to say, there will need to be some consensus on this issue between Apps producers, platforms and regulators in order to protect children from overt selling techniques.

I have plenty of theories where this will end up, but they are only theories. But it is an issue right now at the highest levels within UK Government and has attracted the EU Commission also.

Stuart Dredge Journalist at The Guardian

It’s a real issue for developers of children’s apps. Parents don’t buy paid apps (in large numbers). They’re increasingly afeared of IAP (even the un-scammy kind) and they’re suspicious of ads. Devs caught between a rock, a hard place and a hard, rocky place.

That said, both Fanta and McDonald’s have released children’s apps / games in recent months, so clearly some of the big consumer brands aren’t being put off the area…

Richard Firminger Managing Director, Europe at Flurry
The challenge with “bigger brand partnerships” is like all native advertising and sponsorship, they are not scaleable.

I have close business associates trying to do this kind of stuff and they complain of long lead times, complex deals that greatly impact internal resources and update cycles, relatively low deal sizes (hundred of thousands not millions) and it being difficult grow this type of business – typically advertisers will do it only once – examples like Madagascar 3 and Outfit7, Samsung and Rovio prove the point.

5th July

Since this discussion has proved so interesting, we followed up on this topic during the Children’s Media Conference

Nicholas Lovell Director of Gamesbrief

I recently got an email asking for advice on how to monetise children’s apps. It opened with “Clearly, IAPs aimed at children are immoral”. I declined the consultancy role. In a world where parents won’t pay for apps upfront, don’t like ads in kid’s content and are fearful of IAPs due to some abusive practices, what is the solution?

Harry Holmwood CEO of Marvelous AQL Europe

I think this is an extremely challenging problem, and the main reason I steer clear of apps that target children, for now at least.

At the moment, it feels like the most viable children’s apps will be those that somehow create brand awareness and lead to sales of physical ‘stuff’ – toys etc. But that’s a big play, and way out of the reach of most developers. At the moment, there’s too much of a disconnect between being able to purchase in an app (or purchase an app), and the cash that children may have readily available. Parents may be happy to give their children coins and notes, but sensible ones won’t give them their credit card, and most kids don’t have an iTunes card to hand to spend on purchases. To get one, they have to go to a store and hand over their cash, which puts a huge barrier between them and a purchase.

I think, in time, the concept of children having their own digital wallet will become much more normal and, once that happens, maybe we will see children purchasing in-app, or buying apps in greater quantities. In my experience with my own children, though, they’re extremely reluctant to spend money on any digital content – there are just so many other things they can play, for free, that they have never made any in-app purchases, despite having iTunes credit in their accounts. This is potentially a bigger problem – the new generation has an extremely short attention span, and an endless number of exciting distractions to entertain them. I think the most successful children’s apps will tap into playground culture – the much smaller, walled ‘social network’ that a child lives in has great possibilities for fun, app-enhanced play, both alone and with other children.

Eric Seufert Mentor at Gamefounders

I can’t provide any valuable insight because I don’t have kids, but I think that points to the larger problem — making broad guesses as to how key demographics use a product without being able to test those assumptions is not conducive to satisfied customers. The “gatekeeper / entertainment consumer” paradigm isn’t rocket science, and I think most developers understand it. Likewise, I doubt very much that many developers are out to intentionally generate revenue from kids unscrupulously by enticing them to make small purchases hundreds or thousands of times. So perhaps the reason a valid, sustainable precedent for IAPs in kids’ games hasn’t been established yet is that either 1) kids get bored quickly and don’t retain for long enough to make the freemium model work, or 2) not enough developers have kids and understand how kids think.

Anthony Pecorella Producer for virtual goods games at Kongregate

I think the question of “children’s games” is perhaps a bit broad and should be split out a bit by age and goal (education vs. play). For younger kids I think paid and extensible games are probably your best bet, especially if they are educational. We see paid games like Toca’s variety of educational activites charting decently, even if briefly. I’ve seen an interesting educational model (I can’t for the life of me remember the name of it…started with an A I think) that was free to download but parents can buy additional modules. It was very targeted at the parents, providing reports of time spent on each subject, the strengths and weaknesses of the child, improvements over time, etc. By involving the parent deeply in the process you could actually only upsell to the parent directly but also provide compelling reasons to do so. If the game is truly educational I think parents are much more likely to be willing to spend money on your game.

Once you start targeting older children who might get an allowance and start to have a concept of money and resources then I can see more traditional F2P / IAP models working as long as you maintain an allowance system for the parents to implement. The parents could pre-purchase a large amount that gets automatically given out to the child on a daily or weekly basis. To really work though this would require a “parent mode” on the device – otherwise I don’t think there’s any reasonable way to lock out purchases from the child if they happen to be the one to download the game first. Subscription models, as mentioned above, do work as well, albeit clearly not as well as a robust IAP model.

Of course in each of these cases you’re going to be limiting your overall revenue per user, on top of limiting your audience. We’re not going to see a children’s app stay in the top 25 grossing apps for long, if at all. So I think it’s important to go into it with realistic expectations. If this is something you’re passionate about and talented at then I’m sure you can support a studio and make some decent money, but you’re not going to be a Supercell or GungHo off of children’s games, at least not if you’re ethically sound about it. The day you start targeting “child whales” you should probably rethink your life choices.

Stuart Dredge Journalist at The Guardian

I don’t even know where to start on this one, head scrambled after doing a 45-minute presentation on kids’ apps at the Children’s Media Conference. I made an entire room give a shocked sigh en masse with a screenshot of Snoopy’s ￡69.99 IAP though

I think there’s maybe mileage in building dedicated mobile ad networks for kids’ apps. More experiments needed on that front, if only to show that shoving standard ad units/networks into children’s apps isn’t good

And other stuff. Sorry, really am scrambled. I’d also say, though, that if you’re looking for Puzzle & Dragons-style lucrative success, kids’ apps isn’t the place to be. And maybe that isn’t a problem. Toca Boca has been ‘profitable for some time now’ and is building its brand. That seems encouraging. Or at least would be if the path to profitability for the next 10 Toca Bocas was clearer.

Oscar Clark Evangelist for Applifier

I know some parents will not balk at spending ￡69 on a physical present for their kids, but its harder to feel good about spending that amount on virtual goods – even over time. I might choose to spend more than that on a game over time, but its rare although if I do its because I’ve embraced the game entirely. But spending that on others is usually harder; not least as its on the coldest-side of my Hot-Cold Empathy Gap psychology.

Pitching the right level of spend that makes the game feel good to players and avoiding building an ever growing money pit is important for all games, even I it seems it will cap your revenue potential. But for me that’s a good thing… lets make better games rather than leave players feeling used. That thinking is essential in my opinion if you want to make a great game for adults or kids. The focus on the quality matters in terms of engagement, trust and lifetime value. Make sure the design allows people to pay something, but don’t overly focus on squeezing the monetization for all its worth. The funny thing is I believe that you eventually make better revenue if you focus on the playing quality and player delight.

Better targeting with Ads is a good idea for everyone. I’m sure that its not just the adult/gambling/etc services that don’t want to be exposed to a child audience. Although I suspect a dedicated mobile ads network for children will probably have a whole bunch of legal/commercial/policy issues which I for one wouldn’t want to have to tackle.

Dylan Collins Executive chairman at Fight my Monster
I’ve had exactly 33 conversations about this topic over the last two days at Children’s Media Conference. Insane.

Aggressive IAP design is going to become much harder to use in the kids mobile space-lots of our big brand customers are talking about pulling back from it. The most practical ‘safe’ monetization option in short-medium term will be premium ad network (with appropriate partners etc.).

An ad network isn’t the optimal game monetization mechanic. But I simply don’t see any viable alternatives for now. Apple’s upcoming Kids category is nice but will really just impact pre-school kids. They could obviously fix everything with a kids wallet and some OS-level stuff but I just don’t think it’s a priority for them right now. Important point which people miss: App Store is a monetization platform, not a content platform.

Fundamentally though, the kids app market (and other platforms) is *hard*. Yes, Toca Boca, but they’re the exception which proves the other thing.

Anthony Pecorella Producer for virtual goods games at Kongregate

Yeah, I suppose I ignored the clearest success in this area recently: Skylanders.  It’s a pretty clever implementation of IAP that fits into a model that parents and kids understand and can put value on: action figures.  It provides a nice, controllable gate for parents to monitor the spending, but also allows them to spend big if they deem it appropriate.  Of course the scope of building physical figures and doing actual distribution is outside of what most app developers would even begin to consider, but as the game has grossed over $1B Ben’s correct that the potential for something to be big is clearly there.

Stuart Dredge Journalist at The Guardian

I’ve heard a few people draw attention to Rovio’s revenues being much less than GungHo / Supercell / King, and the suggestion that they’ve missed a trick, or been underperforming in comparison. But suddenly today I thought: are Rovio deliberately holding back from going full throttle on IAP because they know they have lots of children in their community?

I’m not saying they are, but it did make me wonder if that’s what’s made them more cautious with the rollout / level of their IAP. Open to being told that’s a silly suggestion though.

also… I would really like to see some proper, detailed research into parental attitudes on all this stuff. What do THEY think is acceptable and unacceptable?

Because whenever this conversation comes round to the ‘Pfft, if parents buy ￡70 toys there’s nothing wrong with ￡70 IAP’ point of view, I always want to shout “BUT PARENTS DON’T THINK THAT. AND THEY’RE YOUR CUSTOMERS!”

But I have not one shred of actual proof beyond chatting to a few people at the school gates about all this, and would love to see some data. My gut feeling (from that super-limited focus group) is that developers might be shocked at how hardline many parents are on IAP of any kind, not just the high stuff.

I blame the media!

Eric Hautemont CEO of Days of Wonder

I could also be that Rovio feels, like Activision and a dwindling few others ourselves included, that the current freemium craze on mobile isn’t sustainable, klds or not… at least not in the long run, and not for most players.

Even for giant successes like Supercell I find it interesting to see that they seem to have a hard time sticking to their #1 top grossing spot in the US these days… they’re now consistently # 2 to #4, which must be a fairly big difference $-wise.

I know I might sound like a broken record, but people were giving me the same weird look when I was arguing against the sustainability of the social gaming model on FB, 3 years ago. And look at where most of these folks (Zynga, etc.) are these days. (source:gamesbrief)