游戏邦注：本文原作者是市场营销服务公司Mertado首席执行官Vijay Chittoor，原文发表于2010年12月10日，以下所涉数据均以当时为准。

据统计，美国社交游戏的收益取得了飞跃性的发展，预计将于2011年达到12.5亿美元。但还是有很多个体游戏开发者的虚拟商品销售，平均只能从1%至3%的用户身上赚到钱。所以，这些游戏开发者便把盈利方法转向非付费用户，即采用一些与虚拟货币相关的广告或者推广模式（游戏邦注：包括广告推广、问卷调查、交叉推广等途径）来创造收益。但是如果开发者采取这些措施，将会面临用户粘性大大降低的威胁。

但以上这些传统的途径往往会将用户引向第三方网站或者应用界面，造成了当前游戏的用户流失现象。最理想的推广活动也只能成就5%的转化率，也就是说有95%的点击率将用户引向他方，无法给当前游戏带来任何收益。

游戏开发者应该采取何种措施才能既不流失用户，同时又能提高盈利？近期出现了一些有效的解决方案，能够帮助开发者处理好用户粘性问题和盈利问题。这些解决方法不仅能够帮助游戏留住用户，同时也能够提高用户粘性：

Farmville_MCDonalds_Farm(from farmville.wikia.com)

品牌化的虚拟产品：早前麦当劳就与Zynga合作，赞助《Farmville》的第一座品牌化农场，在农场中植入麦当劳的虚拟商品，使用户能够通过点击轻松赢得虚拟货币。这种合作不仅引起了广大用户的兴趣，同时在推动麦当劳品牌的发展和提高《Farmville》用户粘性，并帮助游戏盈利等方面发挥了重要的作用。根据Viximo报告显示，虽然当前品牌化虚拟商品的营收只占游戏总营收的一小部分，但预计到2013年，品牌化虚拟商品的营收将达到1.5亿美元。品牌化商品的点击率不仅比非品牌化商品高10倍，同时还有助于提高用户的品牌意识和购买意愿。Virtual Greats、Viximo和Playspan等公司都等正着手于把品牌化虚拟商品植入游戏中。以下列举的是当今一些品牌化虚拟商品的表现形式：

1.与现实商品绑定的品牌化商品：一些市场营销者为了能够推动虚拟商品的销售，经常把这些虚拟商品与现实世界的一些商品的销售绑定。之前7-11曾与Zynga合作，支持玩家通过在7-11实体店购买一些限量版商品后，解琐《Farmville》游戏中的相关道具。另外一个典型的例子便是老海军（游戏邦注：美国服装品牌）与CrowdStar（全球第二大社交游戏开发商）的品牌植入合作。

it girl--old navy(from blog.games.com)

2.品牌化商品与品牌意识紧密联系：一些市场营销者只关心销售额，并不在乎用户品牌意识是否得到加强，这样就无法使品牌商品与用户购买行为直接挂钩。麦当劳与《FarmVille》的合作，以及沃尔沃曾经为了提高S60的品牌意识而推出其品牌化虚拟商品等案例，即可说明这种市场营销观念并不可取。

品牌化视频内容：例如社交游戏开发商RockYou所推出的“Deal of the Day”项目便可以称得上是另外一种品牌广告模式，并且能够帮助游戏开发商有效地创造收益。这种方法的核心理念便是在游戏中植入视频，直接向用户传达广告信息，而不是在用户登录游戏前的页面播放广告。

游戏内部的竞赛体验：提高盈利的一种方法便是让更多用户转化为直接付费用户，游戏开发者也可以通过提高现存的付费用户粘性，或者鼓励他们购买更多虚拟商品而盈利。社交游戏公司BringIt过去在自己平台上的游戏中加入更多竞赛元素便证明了这一点，通过在游戏全过程中贯穿竞赛体验，可以说是吸引回头客的重要手段。

显然，这种不以降低用户粘性为代价的盈利方式，已经成为推动社交游戏盈利战略中不容小觑的一部分了。

除此之外还有一些较新颖，且更具科学性的游戏盈利解决方案。Mertado曾经推出一项植入社交游戏的虚拟商店服务，让社交游戏开发商能够利用游戏内部的电子商务获得更多收入。玩家如果在游戏中的推广活动日中买东西，他们就可以通过广告推广服务赢取虚拟货币或商品；在他们消费之前，还可以通过游戏中的视频了解交易信息、商品相关内容，完成交易流程，所有这一切操作都将在游戏中进行而无需离开游戏界面。

这种虚拟商店会根据不同的游戏主题设定不一样的商品，如果是以面包屋为主题的游戏，商品中便会出现纸杯蛋糕制作仪器等，如果是吸引时尚敏感度较高的玩家的游戏，则会在商店中展出衣服和饰品等。同时，这些商店还会通过促销活动，让用户积极在店里消费，花掉自己赚得的虚拟货币。

希望我们未来还能看到更多既能帮助盈利，也能够提高用户粘性的好方法：

现实商品与虚拟商品的捆绑销售：角色扮演游戏和虚拟世界都能够折射出现实世界的方方面面，所以很多现实世界中的商品销售也与游戏世界中的商品息息相关。希望在不久的未来，我们能够把现实商品与虚拟商品进行捆绑销售，例如支持玩家在实体店买一个冷酒器并因此获得游戏中相应的虚拟冷酒器。

在推广服务中融入游戏情境：如今的推广服务只是把所有推广内容展示给所有玩家。而假如游戏仅向高级玩家展示推广内容，那么又会是什么情况呢？对于玩家来说，这样做能够使他们更有动力在游戏中晋级，而对于品牌商和营销者来说，这样不仅能够帮助他们提高用户粘性，而且还能更好地推广自己的品牌。

将用户视为品牌宣传大使：当玩家使用了某种虚拟商品后，他们有可能在朋友圈中推广这种虚拟产品，这样便能够在无形中推广品牌，所以说用户可以作为品牌的宣传大使。通过这种病毒式传播，游戏既能提高用户粘性，也能够获得盈利。

以上的所有方法不仅能够帮助开发者创造更完善的用户体验，同时也能够让他们获得更多的利益。而通过使用这些较新颖的方法，开发者甚至有可能获得双倍的高级付费用户。

如今有很多分析都只是针对于美国的游戏市场，所以我很好奇这些发展趋势在全球范围内有何成效。中国是世界上最大的虚拟商品市场。据估计，中国的广告市场营收虽然已经高达37亿美元，但是比起50亿美元的虚拟商品市场营收还是逊色不少。而美国的情况却恰恰相反，在美国虚拟商品市场营收远少于的在线广告市场258亿美元的产值。

因为这种差异，中国等国家将更侧重于从游戏用户身上直接盈利，而不是通过品牌广告或者现实商品/服务等途径盈利。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Social Game Monetization: New Channels to Show You the Money

By Guest Post

[Editor's note: Vijay Chittoor is CEO of Mertado, a startup that offers real-world merchandise within social games. He was previously director of product management at Kosmix, and worked as a consultant for McKinsey.]

By all estimates, U.S. social gaming revenues are growing robustly and are expected to reach $1.25 billion by 2011. However, individual game developers still monetize an average of only one to three percent of their audience through virtual goods.

As a result, alternative monetization techniques have been developed for non-paying users — primarily advertisements and promotions linked to virtual currency (including offers, surveys, cross-promoting other apps, etc.). But these have historically come at the expense of reduced user engagement.

All of these traditional methods involve clicking on an ad or an offer to go to a third party website or app, taking users away from the game experience. The best offers have a conversion rate of around five percent, i.e. 95 percent of offer clicks take users away from the game without adding to revenues.

How can game developers enhance their monetization beyond direct payments without losing their users? A few recent solutions have started bridging the gap between game engagement and monetization. These solutions not only keep the user within the game, but also add to engagement by speaking the language of the game:

Branded virtual goods: McDonald’s recently sponsored Farmville’s first branded farm, which users could simply click to earn virtual currency. This provided instant gratification for the user, great branding for McDonald’s and, most importantly, a great new way for Farmville to engage and monetize its user base. A report by Viximo shows that branded virtual goods are currently a small fraction of game revenues, but projects the number will grow to $150 million in 2013. Not only do branded virtual goods attract 10 times the click-through rates of non-branded goods, they are also proven to increase brand awareness and purchase intent. Companies like Virtual Greats, Viximo and Playspan are starting to distribute these branded virtual goods inside games.  I see a couple of different forms of branded virtual goods today:

1.Branded goods linked to real-world items: Some marketers are looking to drive sales through virtual goods, and to do so they often link the virtual good to the purchase of a real world item. In another deal, 7-Eleven partnered with Zynga to offer branded virtual goods that get unlocked after users make a purchase at a retail location.  Another example is Old Navy’s recent Black Friday integration with Crowdstar’s It-Girl.

2.Branded goods linked to brand awareness: Other marketers are not looking for increased brand awareness instead of sales, and in this case, the branded good is not directly linked to any purchase. An example is the McDonald’s farm mentioned above, or Volvo’s campaign around the use of virtual goods to create a “naughty” branding for the newly launched S60.

Videos: Branded video content, distributed through offerings like RockYou’s Deal of the Day, is another form of brand advertising that can be particularly effective in monetizing games.

The key idea behind these is to deliver the ad message though a video that can be embedded within the game, instead of taking users to a landing page outside the game.

Contests within a game: While one way of increasing monetization is to get more users to become direct paying customers, an attractive alternative is to get the current set of paying customers to engage and spend more. BringIt’s platform for running contests within a game aims to do precisely that, acting as an additional currency sink inside the game. The entire contest experience is delivered in-game, and the contests can even act as a hook to bring users back to the game.

It’s clear that this trend toward monetizing games without taking the user away from the experience will eventually be paramount in successful social game monetization strategies.

There are also a few newer, more experimental monetization techniques. At Mertado, we recently launched an Embedded Shopping unit that offers a new way for game developers to monetize through e-commerce inside the game. Game users are presented with an offer to earn virtual currency or goods if they purchase the deal of the day inside the game; before they buy, they can view a video about the deal, read product details and complete the transaction, all within the game.

The merchandise inside the embedded shops can be customized to the game to some extent; for instance, if your game is themed around baking, the merchandise selection may include products like a cupcake maker, or if the game appeals to a fashion conscious audience, the merchandise can revolve around apparel and accessories. Post purchase, the embedded shops can also suggest ideas for users to spend their freshly earned currency within the game.

In the future, I expect that we will see even more methods of monetization that add to the engagement within the game:

Bundling of real and virtual goods:  Role-playing games and virtual worlds mirror many aspects of the real world, and that provides a great opportunity for marketing products that are contextually relevant to the game. In the future, I expect that we will see integrations where bundles of real and virtual goods are sold together to users: e.g., buy a real Wine Cooler to earn a virtual one in your game.

Adding game context to offers: Today’s offer walls display the same offers to everyone. What if offers got unlocked only for players who have reached a certain level of game-play? For gamers this would be a great way to get recognition for higher levels of engagement. For brands and marketers, this would be a great way of connecting with a highly engaged audience and adding to the brand’s story.

Users as brand ambassadors: Through the use of branded virtual goods, gamers would be in a position to act as brand ambassadors within their circle of friends. Games can reap rich rewards in engagement and monetization by enabling these interactions.

All of these methods will continue to make it easier for developers to create amazing gaming experiences that also monetize very well.  By adding these new options for monetization, developers can potentially expect to double the percentage of monetizing users.

A lot of this analysis has focused on the U.S. market, and I am curious to see how these trends play out internationally.  China is one of the biggest virtual goods markets, and it’s interesting to compare advertising spend in China to the amount of money spent on virtual goods. China’s online advertising market is estimated to be $3.7 billion, which is smaller than its virtual goods market at $5 billion. This is in stark contrast to the United States, where the virtual goods market is much smaller than the online advertising market size of $25.8 billion.

Because of this difference, direct methods of monetizing gaming users might continue to prevail in markets like China over methods that rely on brand advertising or direct response for real goods/services. I would be very interested to hear readers’ opinions on whether some of the new monetization trends emerging in the U.S. will become relevant in China and other international markets.（source:insidesocialgames）