The Struggle Between Market Research And Game Design

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Electronic Arts has a number of studios hard at work right now, but none probably harder than DICE, who isn’t just tackling the return of Star Wars: Battlefront, but also a highly anticipated return of the first-person action/adventure Mirror’s Edge with a sequel. The studio’s general manager, Karl Magnus Troedsson, recently spoke to GamesIndustry International on a number of topics, mainly fan feedback.

“The amount of feedback is just crazy,” Troedsson said. “It’s gotten to the point that there’s no way to respond to it all. In many cases, we have had to step back and become a little bit of a silent listener.”

Fan feedback has been quite positive for the company, even in the face of online problems with the company’s latest product, the 2013 release Battlefield 4. However, not being able to respond to fans directly has created a new challenge for the developer.

“I think gamers expect more direct communication with developers today than in the past,” Troedsson said. “In the beginning when you have a small community, you’re there, they know you’re there, and it’s easy to talk to them. But in the journey of Battlefield, we started to become pretty big, and maybe we lost contact a little bit with our players. We want to get closer to our players as much as possible. And some people are going to say, ‘That’s buzz word bingo, direct-to-consumer, feedback, whatever.’ But it is very important for us. We want to listen to what our players have to say.”

Along with forums, DICE communicates with others through a Battlefield Community Test Environment, where players can test out new updates before they roll out to the public. This allows the company to more effectively crush bugs in the software, rather than seeing them in the final product, as with Battlefield 4.

“It’s very easy for us to miss things, but also get things over-dialed up,” said Troedsson. Because that’s the other thing as well. Not every feedback we get is good feedback. There’s a lot of opinion. Some people want to take Battlefield and combine it with this game and that game and that would be their dream game. And some people just want to go back to Battlefield: 1942, the way it was in the past.

“Any great game team that delivers a great game has a very strong idea of what they want to do,” he continued. “If you have a game team who starts listening to every piece of feedback, you can feedback your game to death just by having people like me and executives and everyone else pulling the team in different directions. ‘You should do this or you should do that. Change that, do this.’

“But the team itself needs to have the integrity to stand up and say, ‘No. This is not in line with our vision. Remember, this is what we said is the core of the game. That’s great feedback, I’ll take that. We can mold that into it. No thank you, that’s not good; we’re not putting pink elephants into the game.’ You need the integrity of the game team to do that, and usually that’s one or a couple of people who have that vision in their head of what they want to create.”

As far as Mirror’s Edge‘s return, which is slated for new consoles sometime next year, DICE is taking the cautious approach. “You could market research any product to death if you’re not careful,” Troedsson said. “In the same way, you can go out on a limb without knowing anything about the market and make mistakes that way as well. When it comes to this product, as we do with all our games, we take a sound look at them from different approaches. We take a look at it from a gamer perspective: Is this something we want to play ourselves Do we believe in it What does the heart say What does the gut say And then we take the business approach and look at it with the mind as well. Do we believe that this has the opportunity to make the numbers we need for this to make financial sense And then there are a lot of people in the organization spending a lot of time analyzing markets.

“But somewhere between the heart decision and the brain decision, you just need to make up your mind. Mirror’s Edge is definitely one of those products. We’re so passionate about this product; it’s a game that needs to be built, basically. Is there an element of a leap of faith here, no pun intended Yes, there probably is, as there is with all games as they’re being built. You don’t know if they’re going to be a smash hit from the beginning. But do we feel like we’re swimming out into an unknown ocean Absolutely not.”

It’ll be interesting to see how the company’s 2015 line-up turns out.

Source: GamesIndustry International

The Ethics Of Paying For YouTube Coverage

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Some interesting information has emerged from a recent survey of video gaming YouTube broadcasters, indicating a new trend when it comes to creating content — and it’s news that not everyone is crazy about.

The survey indicates that a large number of subscribers have accepted a deal from game developers and publishers to record videos about their upcoming products. Both those with large and small audiences were surveyed, with 70 percent having less than 5,000 subscribers, and 30 percent having more than 5,000. Out of the ones with a higher subscriber count, 26 percent have accepted money from a developer.

Image source: Gamasutra

Mike Rose of Gamasutra provided the results of said survey this past week, stating, “So clearly as you move up the subscriber scale, the bigger YouTubers are being offered cash for coverage or asking for cash to cover games, and at least a quarter of them are taking it. However, that doesn’t answer whether the smaller YouTubers would partake in the act if they were given the opportunity.”

As a result, the question of monetization among these YouTubers has been put into question. “We — video creators — live in complicated times,” one YouTuber said in expanded comments on Rose’s survey. “It is expected from our work to be free. Copyright holders don’t want us to monetize, no one likes ads, no one likes paid content – but we invest our free time into covering the games we love and want to share, basically giving free PR for the game itself. If a YouTuber asks for money for delivering great content, it’s not wrong – it’s compensation.”

Clearly some of the concern stems from users not being aware that YouTubers are being compensated for airing some content. The question then arises of obvious it should be when content is sponsored, and what responsibility YouTubers have to keep their audience informed.

What do you think

Source: Polygon

Xbox One Now Supports Game Trials

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In the past, with the Xbox 360, Microsoft offered up a system where certain games came with demos, where gamers could try products before purchasing them, using “trials”. Now, the Xbox One looks to have a similar system in place.

As part of its downloadable July update for the console, Microsoft has introduced the “trial” system to the Xbox One, where players can download games to their system as a free demo, then decide if they want to purchase the full title, without the need to download any additional content.

“When Xbox One launched you could do game demos and you could do games. But we didn’t have the functionality that was on Xbox 360 – that ‘trial’ experience where you could download a demo and then convert it [to a full version],” Microsoft’s ID@Xbox boss Chris Charla has told Eurogamer.

“But now we do. In the same way that we update the Xbox One OS every month, they update the development system every month — or regularly, anyway. So that’s something that we recently turned on. I don’t think we’ve seen any ID@Xbox games yet that have shipped with trials, but we may well in the future. It’s something that’s open to everybody.”

As part of its new initiative, Microsoft wants to make its ID@Xbox library easier for gamers to access. “At the beginning of the day and the end of the day, on Xbox One a game is a game is a game,” said Charla. “They won’t be segregated in any way at all.

“Saying that, we have had a lot of player requests for some way to specifically find the ID@Xbox games, so we have talked about adding some functionality so that people can do a search for just the ID@Xbox games.

“But anything we did like that would be in addition to our core values which are that they are in the store with everything else.”

Several titles have released in the program over the summer, including Outlast and Sixty Second Shooter Prime. And more are on the way, according to Charla. “You can expect lots more games coming,” he said. “There are literally hundreds of ID@Xbox games in development right now.” Many will be out this year, but still more have been locked in for release further in the future. “There a lot in development for 2015, and some for 2016, too.”

Source: Eurogamer

Why Extreme Consumers Make a Difference

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For most markets, general consumers are the primary focus, because, well, they’re the ones who drive business. On occasion, however, there are extreme consumers, such as people who can’t get enough of Porsche products, or folks who avidly hate video games, or someone who exclusively uses something such as a rice cooker to make meals. As “out there” as these consumers may be, they shouldn’t be ignored, according to an article from Forbes.

The website recent spoke with Jill Avery, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and former brand manager at Gillette, Samuel Adams and AT&T about this certain market. “Traditional market research is all about studying the average consumer, which gets rid of the noise in an effort to study the majority of consumers, but also gets rid of people who are potentially leading the category,” she explains.

With consumers who lie “in the tails” of the bell curve, product designers can actually discover new ideas for their company. “Only by looking at consumers who fall within those tails of the normal distribution can you understand the extremes,” Avery continued. “And they often influence the middle, spilling over into what the average consumer believes.”

Avery, working alongside professor of marketing Michael Norton, went further into detail with her recent HBS teaching note, Learning from Extreme Consumers. It was put together as part of the Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development (FIELD) course for first year MBA students. By taking it into account, they become immersed with global research projects to produce a new product or experience within an emerging market country.

Taking part in said project can have students experiencing what it’s like to step outside of their pre-set comfort zone and learn new ideas. “There is an enormous gap between chatting with your friends and chatting with people on the streets of Vietnam,” said Norton. “This exercise creates a bridge for talking to people who are very unlike you.”

Do you think this is a novel approach to reach extreme consumers

Source: Forbes

Drive-Ins Use Creativity For Format Switch

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Considering how much film is changing in terms of distribution, going to a more digital means, some old-movie houses are struggling to find a way to keep up with the times. These include drive-ins, which were a popular institution back in the 50’s, but have lately seen a lot of closures, due to the inability to convert to the new format.

However, some drive-ins have found ways to adapt to the times, using some clever means to work their way around the problem and, as a result, remain open and show the newest movies available on the market.

200 of the remaining 348 drive-ins in the country have found a way to convert over to digital, a process that can cost more than $70,000 on average. Most of them have turned to crowd-funding platforms, including KickStarter and Indiegogo, to fund the process, while others have chosen to invest in financing programs or renting their theaters for secondary business during off-hours, including flea markets.

Ry Russell, a general manager of Saco Drive-In, drove the point home with a social media campaign, and managed to win an $80,000 digital projection system in a contest sponsored by Honda. As a result, his theater is holding a 75th anniversary celebration with the latest films, which will be displayed through said system.

“We’re just seeing Darwinism kind of take over,” he said. “The ones that survive will prosper.”

John Vincent Jr., president of the United Drive-In Theaters Owners Association, believes that conversion is the key to survival with the business, especially since this summer is likely to be “the last summer of film” as far as formatting goes.

Not all drive-ins have been successful, though. The 62-year old Pride’s Corner Drive In is struggling to keep up, only showing $1,350 of its $100,000 campaign to go digital. “When they stop making film, that’s it,” said Andrew Tevanian, operator of the theater. “Then you’re out in the cold.”

What do you think Should film go completely away in favor of a digital means Should drive-ins be saved

Source: Inc.

 

Big Data And Marketing: Part 2

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Big Data has transformed marketing and game design, particularly on mobile platforms. The Mobile Beat panel on Big Data brought together some top publishers and providers on how they’re leveraging big data to help marketers engage the right user in the right moment. In this segment, panelists discussed how Big Data affects both game design and marketing, and what the future holds for Big Data and marketing.

Particpants on the panel were Paul Longhenry, VP and GM for business & corporate development, Tapjoy; Mike Lu, VP product marketing, GREE; Fabien-Pierre Nicolas, GM mobile, Perfect World; and Omer Winkler, director of product marketing, AdTruth. Note: Part One of this panel appeared last week.

One of the things we’ve talked about here is that we’re collecting data on a wide variety of things, both on marketing and demographics of the user, and also on the gameplay itself. Is there a fundamental difference from the game data that gets funneled to the game devs and designers versus what gets funneled to the marketers, or is it data that everyone should look at?

Paul Longhenry, Tapjoy

Paul Longhenry: I think that data is most valuable that is used across all channels. While we help developers monetize by marketing to their users, there’s a lot of brand advertising as well. Understanding that someone just completed Level 17 after having failed after trying 5 times is an incredibly important signal. You’ll want to deliver a message at that point and maximize the impact for a brand advertiser. Similarly if a user is at Level 12 after failing 8 times, a game developer might say ok that level is too hard and that’s actionable data for them, for us it’s time to bring Samsung in to give the user some currency as a gift — that sticks in a consumer’s head, so the context around the engagement in the app tells you about the emotion of the consumer at that point, and that’s really valuable.

Omer Winkler: In this case, everything you learn as a marketer applies to business as a publisher. As a publisher, what you want to do is best represent your audience to advertisers, whether it’s through an ad network or you sell your inventory through an exchange, your ability to represent your audience relies on how good you are making sense of this data , how good you are at deeper understanding your user segments etc. We talked about how this also correlates with your ability to link your data to data that’s outside of your environment. How you can use data providers to enrich your segments and profiles so that when you do talk to other companies for monetization purposes, whether it’s an ad partner, ad networks or exchange, you can sell more robust segments against your users and inventory.

Mike Lu: All data falls into two buckets: LTV (life time value) or CPI (cost per installation). It’s not just about LTV of users buying digital goods, even how those ads can increase the LTV of that user. For CPI, is the banner the right banner Are you reaching the right audience Are your ads done right Is your retention making sure that cost is greater or less than what you can actually afford So every data point should drive to those buckets, and if not, we’re looking at inconsequential data at that point. Unless you can correlate to one or the other, it’s smoke data and there’s a lot of that out there.

Mike Lu, Gree

Fabien-Pierre Nicolas: We’re going to go even further from that, and go from two sets of data to one. If you look at the landscape for apps, you can see that free-to-play won the battle a while back. If I were to pick only one metric, it’s time, number of sessions multiplied by time per session per day.

Whether it’s a game or a bunch of apps, if it’s your first app and people are connecting less than 5-10 minutes a day you should truly ask yourself what’s wrong with my product. If, on the opposite, you’re seeing 90 minutes, that’s definitely a winner, were going to double down because users are voting with their time which is the most precious currency a lot of them have.

A lot of them don’t have the money to spend so they’re not monetizing, but they do have the time and they do have the devices, and technically they provide value in other ways. They write wikis, they post videos on YouTube, they may not spend but they’re still great for community, they’re your app advocate. I don’t think we should discount that. They have a key use to facilitate acquisition of other users organically. So look at the time, that is the key.

Look at comparable apps. There’s a bunch of tools out there to give you benchmarks to see if your app is doing well or not vs others.

One of the most common pitfalls is not factoring in that UA will muddy your metrics big time. Especially when you start to funneling users from nonincentivized and incentivized channels. If UA team doesn’t talk to Product team and keep them apprised on a day to day basis, or at least once a week, and Day One retention crashed, they’ll be like what happened Why are they not completing the tutorial It might just be that you just switched SDKs, then you know that X percent of your users will drop out right away, and its not a big deal, your product team should just sort out those users. It happens often that the great metrics you see early on will drop by at least 50 percent when they start doing UA at scale. So they’re doing modeling thinking that it’s going to be amazing making $200 million a year, and they’re not making a tenth of that.

Looking ahead next year, what are the biggest opportunities and threats What’s coming in terms of exciting new technology and hardware?

Paul Longhenry: The biggest opportunity for the whole industry is unlocking brand advertising, brand advertisers have been relatively slow to embrace mobile, they’ve tested it out, banner ads don’t work, they don’t leave a lasting impression at least not a positive one on consumers. There’s a lot of experimentation with Tapjoy and others that’s leaving great brand engagement experiences and when you think about the opportunity for the whole ecosystem to make money off of the mainstream consumer who doesn’t spend money in an app, it’s brand advertising. The television advertising industry today is still $70 billion a year and none of us watch commercials. There’s better ways to spend those advertising dollars to engage consumers where they’re spending their time and where they really appreciate it. From our perspective, that is the most exciting one.

Omer Winkler: The biggest opportunity for the industry is expanding what we call the universe of known users and being able to recognize your users across different channels, platforms, devices, and that in turn will drive more spend into mobile because if you look at the disparity between time spent in mobile and ad dollars spent in mobile there is a huge opportunity in the market today.

Omer Winkler, Adtruth

Brand and performance marketeers would love to spend in mobile but for them mobile is just one channel. They have so many channels that if they cannot activate their data in mobile, if they cannot find an environment that will let them holistically market to their consumers, then they will not spend. As we work with major retailers, banks etc., we see how they slowly shift spend into mobile. As the data becomes more transparent and as you allow them to activate even more of their offline data they have in the mobile channel, they can improve their attribution and better measure campaigns, etc.

Mike Lu: There’s lots of things to be excited about. The market is just starting out, in fact GREE is just starting a new venture in the last minute hotel booking business, talking about a games company getting into that space. There’s tons of opportunities. My favorite are the opt-in on demand apps, whether it’s food, laundry, even Uber themselves are testing Oakland to deliver food.

What is the SalesForce of mobile . . . anyone Oh, that’s because there isn’t one!

So opportunities are there, and in the coming years we’ll see companies spawn out of nowhere have a huge impact in the market space changing what we do everyday.

Fabien-Pierre Nicolas: Any global players that take the best of the Western world in terms of a mobile app user experience and sense of design and merge it with Eastern developers sense of monetization in seizing the moment with very strong engagement — that will be very exciting. We can learn from each other.

In China and Korea, core gaming is in the top 30 grossing apps, the core gamers which were the bulk on console are now on mobile. In Japan and the West, it’s missing. Mid core apps are double true hardcore gaming apps, so there is an opportunity in the market there. Right now there are no great mobile FPS or MMO.

All the great genres on console are not represented on mobile yet. So that too is a great opportunity.

The true threat to our industry is distraction. Wearables is a good example, where a lot of money is being poured in by a few major platform holders and distracting developers time and resources. At the end of the day there haven’t been any great success stories. Ouya was one in the space last year that failed miserably and yet it distracted developers from making better apps for mobile, instead they were making better apps for Ouya. So far there’s been no traction, and as we’ve seen in free to play, scale is everything. But some developers get distracted, they’re told, hey here’s $200,000, go make your wearable app and then they miss 6-9 months working on the next mobile app. For tools, I see mergers happening in this space simply so that there can be one great tool that can do more than one thing. It’s slower than expected in the West, maybe a foreign investor will accelerate the mergers in this space.

Fabien Pierre-Nicolas, Perfect World

There are plenty of tools available to developers for collecting, analyzing and acting on Big Data. What would the ideal tool be?

Fabien-Pierre Nicolas: The ideal combined tool would let you track and act, with analytics, push notification, and cross promotion.

Paul Longhenry: When you talk about what the ultimate tool will do, segmentation kind of has to be at the core of it. Whether it’s tied to analytics or tracking your customer acquisition across different channels or driving your marketing messages or your re-engagement campaigns off push notifications, what you really want is all of that outbound activity to be triggered off of some common logic of what a person actually cares about, and that’s really what segmentation is all about, it’s inferring what someone cares about and taking action, and testing a given segment of users then continuing to optimize.

Mike Lu: If Google Adsense can marry Tableau, that’s what we all want.

Knowledge of the customer is critical. Building an audience is a more difficult task than building a product these days, and maintaining an audience with segmentation, data, and understanding of what your customers want, when they want it and why they want it — that’s what these tools are all about, isn’t it?

Paul Longhenry: The best example of this is Amazon, no two people in this room have the same Amazon experience, but it’s not always personalized to you, so they’re promoting different products at different times of day depending on when you like to shop, or different times of the year depending on your purchase history. They create segments that drives all the marketing you see on Amazon. And they didn’t use a specific tool for that, they built it in house, it’s their core competency, they drive 50 percent of their revenue off product recommendations rather than what were searching for in the search bar. That’s kind of best in class at scale. What you want to do is build the tools that allow someone much smaller than Amazon to have the same kind of advantages in reaching their consumer base.

Omer Winkler: Even if it’s not personalized, per se, it is still more relevant, so delivering relevancy is something you can do through deep segmentation of your user base.

Mike Lu: All of these are great ideas, but it’s not because we haven’t tried, it’s because we’re on a platform that isn’t open to us, UDID is going away along with a lot of other things, it’s just not possible right now to get truly correct data off Apple.

Omer Winkler: That’s actually part of what AdTruth does. As a provider of audience identification, this is exactly the hedge against Apple and Google that we create for our customers, helping them cover blindspots they have and giving them visibility into audiences where they have low visibility. We also give them better resolution so that they have a deeper understanding of whatever segments they’re looking at.

The market is dynamic and we cannot control what Apple and Google might do tomorrow, and how they might change things, so we have to find or build solutions that help us through whatever changes we encounter. Whatever you’re doing now that’s working great may not be working great in 6 months, the market may have shifted and you have to constantly adapt, don’t you?

Omer Winkler: Currently in the market you see a huge battle over digital identity, it’s much bigger than mobile and apps, it’s a battle over who owns the digital identity today and segmentation and identification is a byproduct of that. Facebook, Google and Apple are the three major players in this space. The message is that big data gives you a lot of opportunities, the question is do you own the data or is Facebook the one who owns the data and who gives you some aggregated purview of whatever data they own. We see in the market a lot of brand advertisers looking at this as an opportunity to build identification capabilities that are platform agnostic and they’re saying we need an in-house neutral solution that will help us as a hedge against those players.

Many thanks to the panel and for you joining us today.

8 YouTube Tips And Tricks From Strawburry17

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By Jessica Klein

As YouTubers grow up, so should their brands. Strawburry17 (real name: Meghan Camarena) manages to maintain relevance while evolving her YouTube presence by following a few simple tips and tricks that she shared during her VideoInk interview. We’ve compiled them to give other YouTube creators a sense of how to navigate growing up on a platform that both welcomes and hinders change.

Give back to your fans.

Camarena does this by hosting specifically fan-directed events. When it came to screening her new programming, she had “one [screening] that was mainly focused on the fans, thanking them for everything.” Showing appreciation comes along with genuinely caring about your audiences, which successful YouTube creators do.

Branch out.

You never know, you may discover new passions, like Camarena. “I started with a vlog talking about my day, but then I started throwing in a few skits here and there. I enjoyed that, because it was cool creative content, and there was an element of storytelling that I really could appreciate. As I gained more of a following, I started to dive into music videos.”

Stick with what the fans initially fall in love with in the beginning, but once you have a following, it can be fun (not to mention safer) to try new things in your videos. It might even reap rewards, which Camarena got in the form of major deals through her music content, a medium she did not start out with on YouTube.

Keep your channel relevant.

Becoming irrelevant on YouTube, in Camarena’s opinion, amounts to “the worst thing in the world.” She explained this means that “you’ve lost your audience…[and] have to start over front scratch.” When Vevo came along, Camarena’s music videos did become irrelevant to a certain extent. She learned to work around this and change for the better.

Take a break to herald in fresh ideas.

Embarking on “The Amazing Race” with a friend after the whole music video letdown served as Camarena’s much-needed vacation from content creation. After the break, she went “back to her roots” and started gaining 500,000 subscribers a week with her fresh content.

Maintain a schedule.

This ranks high up on the list of tips for YouTubers. Camarena accomplished it with three videos a week before she began working her way up to five. Providing your viewers with a steady stream of new content keeps them loyal to your channel. It gives them something to regularly watch for.

Connections and networking are key.

Camarena admitted, “Being a YouTuber now is so much harder. It’s almost impossible to gain exposure, even if your videos are amazing, unless you’ve been around and you know the right people…your videos aren’t going to be seen.” That’s why it’s always important to make friends in the YouTube community. Collaborate with others who share your demographic and something totally organic and beautiful may come from it.

Be open to viewer criticism…but don’t let it get you down.

Part of the magic of YouTube lies in the relationship creators have with their fans. However, sometimes it can start to feel too close for comfort. As Camarena described, “My viewers feel very entitled to tell me what they think I should be doing and how they think I should be fixing things. I’m open to constructive criticism, but it’s a little bit too much.”

Instead, maintain a balance between what your fans tell you and what you tell you (and them!).

It’s important to be open to your audience on YouTube since the platform is all about viewer interaction. What makes YouTube stars so special is that they’re not above taking into account what their fans have to say. As a creator, you just have to balance listening to their advice with taking it too literally, as fans are often slow to accept changes to a creator’s style and/or content.

Camarena presents a good example to follow on this front. “I was telling people, ‘It’s okay, don’t feel bad or get mad at me because I’m changing, because I’ll always be here, and when you’re ready for the change, maybe you’ll come around again!’”

This article was originally posted on VideoInk and is reposted on [a]listdaily via a partnership with the news publication, which is the online video industry’s go-to source for breaking news, features, and industry analysis. Follow VideoInk on Twitter @VideoInkNews, or subscribe via thevideoink.com for the latest news and stories, delivered right to your inbox.

 

Mercedes-Benz Is Utilizing Instagram To Reach Younger Audience

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Mercedes-Benz has decided to turn to social media again, this time to attract new millennial buyers to the new 2015 Mercedes GLA-Class. They have created a new vehicle in the luxury compact SUV segment with the GLA-Class, which is scheduled to hit lots this fall.

Mercedes is using Instagram, Twitter and Facebook in its #GLApacked campaign to attract a new, younger buyer to the brand. A similar campaign was launched last year with the CLA-Class, which was considered a success. Mercedes is expecting to see similar results with the GLA.

The luxury car company has solicited help from artists and athletes who will be loaned a GLA for a cross-country excursion. The participants are instructed to document their travels on Instagram starting June 9. First, however, they were asked to (artfully) arrange cargo on a GLA floormat, showing what they would pack into the all-new GLA for a dream road trip.

This isn’t the first time Mercedes has used Instagram like this. Last July through September, Mercedes Benz turned to Instagram to help launch a new lower-cost car model, the CLA. The “Take the Wheel” campaign from last year was nearly identical to #GLApacked: Mercedes loaned CLAs to popular Instagram users and had them post pictures of their journeys. Tapping into these influencers’ following was instrumental, as many of them had half a million or more Instagram followers.

“Take the Wheel” achieved its goal of reaching this demographic. The earlier campaign generated 87 million Instagram impressions and 2 million likes across the pages of the influencers involved and the @mbusa page.

Most importantly for Mercedes, however, is that young people bought CLAs. According to Mercedes’ digital marketing manager Mark Aikman CLA owners are “one of the youngest age groups in the history of the brand.” A majority of CLA buyers are Gen-X or Gen-Y, and for 75 percent of them, it was their first Mercedes.

This time Mercedes has a marketing option that it didn’t have with its CLA campaign – paid Instagram ads, an effort that wasn’t part of the new campaign at first. However, Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, enjoyed the CLA promotion so much last year that it approached Mercedes about joining the select group of brands advertising on Instagram. Aikman said Mercedes was eager to take them up on the offer.

The ads are targeted at males and females of a “millennial” age, Aikman said, and will run throughout July.“We’re definitely seeing some millennials buying, just a little later in life,” Aikman said.

Aikman said Millennials differ significantly from older car buyers in how they go about buying a car. Specifically, much of their consideration occurs online instead of on the lot.

“They’re walking into dealerships ready to buy more so than to kick the tires and determine which model might be right for them,” Aikman said.

Instagram is certainly an ideal platform for reaching millennials. More than half (51 percent) of 18- to 34-year-olds are on it, higher than Facebook (36.4 percent), Pinterest (41.3 percent), Tumblr (49.7 percent) and Twitter (40.7 percent), according to comScore. In addition, 58 percent of the Interbrand Top 100 have active accounts on Instagram.

Aikman stated, “We’ve realized that visual storytelling through Instagram and Facebook is a really powerful tool for the younger consumer.”

Source: Digiday

 

Gameloft Changing Focus To Quality Over Quantity

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While it’s always nice for a company to push multiple best-selling games out the door, it’s all for naught if they aren’t good ones. Fortunately, it appears that Gameloft is taking a new approach that will focus more on the quality of its upcoming games, rather than the count.

Gameloft vice president of publishing for the Americas, Baudouin Corman, believes this will be a change that leads to “fewer, bigger, better” titles. “That’s our case, and the case of a lot of competitors,” Corman said. “We used to launch 30 games on smartphones or tablets [annually]. This year we’ll launch 12 to 14 games, but we didn’t reduce the number of developers, so the numbers speak for themselves. We develop less games, but with more investment on each game . . . We see some companies making a very good living with just one, two, or three games. So when you have one successful game, it can be so big, you don’t need too many other titles.”

It’s not easy to make such a switch, as the mobile market as a whole continues to expand, with growing interests in new genres and releases. However, this change will bring a six-month add-on to development time, going from 12-18 months to 18-24 months.

There are a number of market forces pushing mobile developers in this direction, Corman believes, with justification in the market for stronger investments and the ability to transition to a free-to-play stance, which isn’t always easy with the format of the games.

As far as free-to-play goes, “I’m not saying we’ll never do premium, but when we look at the opportunities and how much we can invest in a game, the opportunities are much bigger with a free-to-play game than a premium game today,” Corman said. “These are the dynamics of the market . . . Things are changing so fast that what’s clear today could be different tomorrow. It would be easy to say premium is obviously done forever. But the truth is for now, free-to-play is dominating. Tomorrow, who knows

“This market is really switching from feature phones to smartphones very fast,” Corman concluded. “It started like 12 months ago, and few companies working in South America were expecting the switch to be that fast.”

Source: GamesIndustry International

Digital Ad Spending In Games Charted

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The market for digital ads is growing, and games are a particularly good target. Digital marketing software solution firm Kenshoo has collected some key information about the market and placed it into this handy infographic. Some highlights: 30 percent of gamers access games via mobile devices and by 2018 over 53 percent of social network users (101.8 million people) are expected to be active social gamers. The average age of gamers is 30 and 55 percent are male. 59 percent of internet users in EMEA are active gamers (58 percent in the Americas), making online advertising a perfect channel to target current and potential gamers.

Source: Kenshoo