Measuring Male And Female Gaming Audiences

A new report by SuperData Research shows just where the line divides between male and female gamers, in a story published by Joystiq.

According to the genre breakdown provided by SuperData, male audiences have a better preference over massive multiplayer online (MMO) games, with a 66 percent ratio compared to a 34 percent female audience. In addition, men also dominate in the FPS category by a similar ratio, 66 to 34 percent.

However, females have a bigger audience when it comes to general PC play, including socially linked games, with a slight 50.2 percent advantage over men’s 49.9 percent. In addition, they also dominate the RPG category with 53.6 percent compared to 46.5 percent of a male audience, and they also have a majority stake in mobile, with 57.8 percent compared to the male’s side at 42.4 percent.

This follows on the company’s previous MMO market report, which indicates that, with League of Legends players almost divide down the middle, with 60 percent males and 40 percent females.

“Women are closing the gamer gender gap as they represent two out of five MMO gamers,” SuperData said about the report. “Women account for almost half of MMO players, contrary to the stereotyped gamer landscape. Players between 18 and 30 account for 50 percent of the US MMO audience. These players represent the largest age group, many of which started playing MMOs as children, during the segment’s early years, and have continued into their adulthood. This generation is expected to expand the older markets as they age since they are the first generation to have grown up with MMOs.”

Meanwhile, NCBI recently posted its own findings on navigating the female audience with MMO games, namely World of Warcraft. In it, the firm explored a number of subjects, including the relationship of harassment and cyberbullying in such games, as well as the prevalence of sexism and gender stereotyping. The full report can be found here.

Such trends continue to be on the rise, and rather troubling news for the industry, as we explained previously in this article. That’s a shame, especially considering that female gamers are just as skilled and privy as their male counterparts, as they’ve proven on a number of occasions.

Even though many are in support of the gamer movement, it appears that such “trolls” won’t be going away anytime soon — and that could very well prompt companies to try and make moves to make female gamers a bit more welcome, no matter what genre they take a liking to. We certainly hope so.

Image source

Fabric Helping Twitter’s Growth

Twitter may still be rolling in the dough, but the company is concerned about growing an audience as big as its competitors, namely Facebook. Fortunately, it’s turning to a rather usable source for help – Fabric.

Not actual fabric, mind you. Fabric is a set of app-development tools unveiled by the site this past week. With it, developers are able to integrate tweets and MoPub services into its apps. As a result, the growth of Twitter’s monetization services – and influence – can take effect, according to Digiday.

With tweets embedded into apps, the outreach to a potential audience can be greater, enabling them to sign up for the social site in return. In addition, incorporating tweets into MoPub ads will increase knowledge in the company’s general services, for those who remain uninitiated.

With 284 million users, Twitter’s base is nothing to scoff at, as that’s a 23 percent increase from the year before. However, the company believes that’s a rather slow growth, especially with the quick acceptance of its competitors, namely Facebook.

Part of its problem is trying to keep users from wandering off the service, as it experienced last year following a huge spike of followers with a tie-in through the World Cup soccer tournament. With Fabric, these fortunes could possibly turn around, and for the better.

With the service, Twitter opts to make things easier for applications to use tweets and MoPub for advertising purposes, thus providing the outreach it’s hoping for. The service also promises to allow people to compose tweets through other apps, tying back in to the main site and, again, increasing its audience, even if it’s not direct.

Jeff Seibert, mobile platform director for the company, believes that the monetization portions of Fabric aren’t the end goal, but rather a wide adoption across a heavy developer base. “This is a very long-term strategy. The primary goal is making app developers interested in building on Twitter,” he explained. “We’re confident if Fabric is successful, that bottom line will be met.”

Here’s hoping the program is a success.

Mobile Users Prefer Ad-Based Apps

The Digital Advertising Alliance, or the DAA, has released a survey asking adult mobile users about their preference for ad-supported or fremium models and to gauge interest in tools for control over what ads are served.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents preferred free apps that were supported by ads as opposed to paying up front for an app that did not have ads. When users were asked if they would download their free apps again if they were required to pay for them, only 8 percent responded that they would.

When it comes to having a modicum of control over what ads are seen, Americans were largely interested in having ads served to them that were geared to their interests and 71 percent of survey respondents overall said they would love to have some tools to give them transparency about these ads in regards to relevancy and the collection of data.

This openess to ads and preference for ad-supported apps would seem to only increase if app users had access themselves to which ads they were shown. It makes sense that a tool that would allow for such transparency would be preferrable to users over fears about big data.

The DAA has said that they are planning to launch “AppChoices” which will provide users with control over mobile advertising.

“[AppChoices will be] a downloadable tool that allows users to manage their relevant advertising preferences in mobile apps. The tool is built on the same robust principles that support DAA’s groundbreaking Web-based program, and provides functionality similar to that of the DAA Icon experience which is served globally at a rate of a trillion times per month” said a resprentative of the DAA to MarketingLand.

 

Ayzenberg Group Bolsters Brand Leadership Team

Ayzenberg Group has made two senior-level additions to the agency’s creative and account management departments, further bolstering the agency’s in-house capabilities. Former BLT executive Matt Rice has joined Ayzenberg as Vice President of Creative Operations alongside Justin Kirby, who will be taking on his new role as Account Director. Their experience and expertise will be especially valuable in helping fuel the ongoing growth and expanding capabilities at the award-winning agency. The hires signify Ayzenberg’s ever-deepening belief in creating memorable imagery to support a visual narrative.

“A picture being worth 1,000 words is the essential reality which has now been amplified through social media…more visually oriented work leads to a more successful communication,” stated Eric Ayzenberg, CEO and Chief Creative Office, Ayzenberg Group.

Rice brings his 20-plus years of expertise and insight to the development and management of creative campaigns within the agency. He will work closely with the agency’s Principal and Creative Director, Stu Pope. Rice has deep roots in brand development for film, and television properties in addition to founding the video game business at BLT & Associates, where he oversaw award-winning work and consistently grew the agency’s revenue Y-o-Y. Additional past experience includes marketing management positions at Warner Brothers Studios and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

“We are very excited to have Matt join the creative leadership of our agency,” said Stu Pope, Principal and Creative Director, Ayzenberg Group.  “His unique creative sensibilities and strong strategic insights will serve to broaden our client base in video games while deepening our commitment to telling our clients’ brand stories in different ways, at different times, in diverse places that organically resonate with their audiences.”

Kirby joins Ayzenberg as Account Director for the agency’s entertainment and video game clients in the Pacific Northwest, operating out of Seattle. As Account Director, Kirby will be in charge of managing the agency’s existing video game clients and growing its video game business development overall. Like Rice, Kirby has deep roots in the video game industry, serving as the Group Marketing Communications Manager for Microsoft’s Xbox video game division for over a decade and spending two years as a Marketing Manager for Vivendi Entertainment.

“The addition of Matt and Justin emphasize our commitment to brand and client management and we look forward to working closely with these very talented individuals I have admired for many years who have collaborated on the identities of such brands as Gears of War, Halo, and, Mass Effect and individually on Star Trek, Dragon Age, Fable, The Dark knight, Forza and many more.” said Chris Younger, Principal, and oversees  Strategy, Sales and Client Services at Ayzenberg Group.

 

Now On Tumblr, Autoplay Video Ads By Hulu, Universal, And More

by Jessica Klein

In the wake of Tumblr’s recent announcement that its video player “finally works,” the company has also decided to leverage its new features by offering them up to advertisers.

Multiple brands, including JC Penney, Hulu, Universal, Lexus, The CW, and Unilever’s Axe, are participating in the launch, running autoplay ads on the social-blogging platform beginning Tuesday, October 28.

All ads will play automatically without sound, but they’ll appear in-stream for users on laptops and mobile devices. On desktop, users will also have the option to “pop out” the video on the side and watch as they surf their Tumblr feed.

These sponsored video ads are still in a beta stage for Tumblr, with plans to open them up to all advertisers in mid-November.

Tumblr hasn’t disclosed pricing for the ads, but said it’s charging on a cost-per-view basis. Here, the company defines a view as a video that’s played and has been “in view” for at least two seconds, which are in line with industry standards for video viewability.

Tumblr is obviously not the first social network to launch an autoplay ad option for advertisers. Facebook embarked on its video business with the same approach, and has been able to attract plenty of advertisers to distribute shareable content on its network.

And like Facebook, Tumblr has been trying to convince media and entertainment companies to buy ads on its platform. An autoplay ad option could go a long way in helping Tumblr meet its $100 million revenue target for 2015, which parent company Yahoo projected during its most recent earnings call.

One thing potentially in Tumblr’s favor: video is popular among its users, with video posts growing twice as fast as photo posts. (That said, we have no idea how many of the platform’s 420 million monthly uniques actually watch that content.)

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.

This Week’s [a]list Jobs – October 29

[a]listdaily is now your source for the hottest job openings for senior management and marketing in games, entertainment and social media. Check here every Wednesday for the latest openings.

Here are this week’s [a]list jobs:

For last week’s [a]list jobs, click here.

Automating Mobile Marketing

The art and science of marketing has undergone vast changes in the last few decades, and nowhere is this more evident than in mobile apps. The mobile platform (in general terms) is a marketer’s dream: Immense reach, incredible flexibility, boundless creative opportunities, all the data you could wish for. That, of course, leads to an explosion of tools and techniques, massive mountains of data and endless decisions you have to make. Which creative works better Which ad network should you be using for which purpose And even if you know the answers to those questions for last week, will this week be the same

Into this maelstrom of marketing sails Singular, a company founded earlier this year that promises to help marketers navigate through these stormy seas. Singular “enables marketers to unify and analyze their entire mobile marketing operations through a single dashboard, allowing them to optimize campaigns by cost, LTV, ROI, ad placement, a myriad of targeting parameters, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) to drive maximum return on investment.” as their marketing materials put it. Adding to this dashboard is Singular’s latest tool, the Creative Optimization Wizard.

Gadi Elishayov

With the Creative Optimization Wizard, “marketers can now identify the best and worst performing creative assets for each campaign in real time based on full-funnel analysis of CTR, conversions, CPC, CPI, ARPDAU, ROI or whatever KPI matters most to their business,” Singular said. How well does this work According to Singular, customers who used its Creative Optimization Wizard during the product’s beta stage were able to nearly double the click-through rates for creative running on iOS, experiencing an average lift of 91 percent over a 3 month time period.

“The feedback we’ve gotten on the Creative Optimization Wizard is incredibly positive,” said Gadi Elishavov, CEO and Co-founder of Singular. “Creative is such a critical factor in the mobile advertising mix, and yet there are no tools available today to help marketers understand how their creatives are performing across multiple campaigns. With our Creative Optimization Wizard, marketers can see what images and graphics are working best for which audiences, and art directors can test and iterate different concepts for efficacy. The impact is both immediate and significant.”

Top grossing app developer Storm8 was among several prominent customers using Singular’s Creative Optimization Wizard during the product’s beta program. Commented James Peng, Head of User Acquisition and Monetization at Storm8, “With transparency and reporting granularity becoming crucial in the new era of mobile performance marketing, Singular’s Creative Optimization Wizard provides us the clarity that we need, allowing us to invest in winners, cut underperforming creatives, and match the right creative to the right audience to deliver optimal performance.”

The [a]listdaily spoke with Singular CEO and co-founder Gadi Elishayov about the company, the Creative Optimization Wizard, and how Singular is trying to help app marketers.

[a]listdaily: Why did you want to create a mobile marketing platform

Gadi Elishayov: All three founders — myself, the CTO and the COO — used to work at a company called Onavo, that was a two-sided business. There was a consumer app that people used to use to compress their data [and thus reduce their data usage charges]. By virtue of compressing your data, everything would pass through Onavo’s servers. Onavo created the biggest mobile panel in the world on real devices. We had competitive data about real engagement usage, and you could see what people were doing on apps, we could combine that with demographics and offer a unique set of data for a lot of companies. Tools like App Annie offer to see you in the App Store, but this offered engagement data. I was leading research, my other co-founder was leading development, and the third co-founder Susan was leading business development and sales. Working at Onavo we were doing user acquisition ourselves. The concept was getting people to use our application and that made our panel bigger and stronger, and reduced biases in all sorts of segments.

We leveraged user acquisition pretty heavily. As the business grew, many of our customers were really the biggest spenders on mobile and wanted to benchmark themselves. The data Onavo provided helped them to see where they stood against the competition.

Doing all this work with marketers, we realized that there are many gaps in mobile marketing, and that led to us forming this company. It was a combination of seeing our customers at Onavo and experiencing it ourselves. My friend was head of marketing at Onavo, and I remember she was preparing reports for the CEO and she used to work for almost a week manually preparing reports to present to the CEO about the activity they had done in one month of advertising activity, and I was shocked by how manual that was.

After we left Onavo, we got together and asked ‘where did we feel there was a big pain ‘ In mobile marketing, it seemed like things were way too manual than they should be. We started researching that, and we built our first product trying to solve all those problems we’ve seen of all the manual work involved. We were actually amazed to see how many companies are struggling with the same problems Onavo had. We saw many of Onavo’s customers like Zynga, Kabam, and Gree, they were struggling to do the same. We heard they took the Onavo tools and tried to use them to help them do mobile marketing, and it wasn’t really fit for that. They needed tools for their day to day work.

Our concept was we want to automate in that space, we want to replace those manual operations with automated work. That’s how we started Singular.

[a]listdaily: You’re really trying to pull together information across multiple sources and allow marketers to analyze it at a high level, isn’t that it

Gadi Elishayov: That’s a good definition. When you look at mobile marketing you see such an insanely fragmented market, both with the number of networks you have, and publishers, and agencies. Mobile, from a technical perspective, has caused these silos to be created of data, you have so much data on the networks and inhouse that you use to track bids and operations, and you have your own business intelligence systems. In order to do that efficiently people have to pull this data together. That’s what we call the V1, which is tying all that data and surfacing that to people. Part of that is getting the data, and the second part is connecting that.

We have a firm belief that your entire operation could be managed from one place. We want to create tools, a SaaS platform, to help you do all of that. Our creative optimization wizard is a demonstration of how we implement that vision. Creative is a huge place you can optimize. If you think about it, collecting the cost manually from every ad network on a daily level is possible, but when you have so many creatives and you want to get the cost per creative and the revenue that is generated by those users, it gets insane.

[a]listdaily: How do you want to build out your service

Gadi Elishayov: We have a lot of exciting things in the works. We believe in automating the workflow, so our natural progression would be enabling people to do more over the platform. There are a ton of things we can do over the platform, whether it’s helping you manage things or helping you analyze things. There are so many exciting ideas that our customers bring up, and so many exciting things that we have in the works. You will see Singular expanding its tool set to accommodate more of the work people do today. There’s so much untapped potential right now, and when you tie together those different components of what people do it can be so much more powerful. We’re already working with some of the biggest customers, and I think that approach has been working well so far.

 

Marvel Announces Epic Film Slate

Over the past few years, Marvel Studios has produced remarkable numbers with its big-screen films, including $1.5 billion for 2012’s The Avengers, as well as over $750 million for its newcomer Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, it’s about to take its film library to a whole new level.

During a press event today, Marvel Studios announced its “Phase Three” slate, and it’s got comic book fans excited, as it will bring about several big events that they’ve been expecting for several years. This includes the arrival of Thanos in the Avengers series (after he was teased at the end of the first movie in 2012), as well as new Captain America and Guardians of the Galaxy films.

In addition, the line-up will also introduce several new heroes to the fold, including 2016’s Doctor Strange, which will reportedly feature Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role; 2017’s Black Panther starring Chadwick Boseman in the lead role; and The Inhumans, which will debut in 2018. Captain Marvel will arrive in 2018 as well.

Perhaps the big news is that the third chapter in the Avengers series, Infinity War, will be divided into two films, with the first part coming in 2018 and the second arriving a year later. Word has it that stars from Guardians of the Galaxy could be involved somewhere in this story, though no confirmation has been given yet.

Mainstays Captain America and Thor will also get their own separate chapters in the Marvel Universe. Following the success of this year’s Winter Soldier, the Captain will return in 2016 with Civil War, which will also feature Robert Downey Jr. appearing as Iron Man; and Thor will return, with Loki as well, in Ragnarok, which will arrive in July 2017.

This is big news for Marvel, especially considering that its primary 2015 film release, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, has set a record number of views with last week’s trailer debut, cleaning up 32.3 million views in its first 24 hours of release. No doubt it’ll have no problem matching — or even surpassing — the original Avengers‘ $1.5 billion total. Ant-Man is scheduled to release next summer as well.

Indeed, big-budget blockbusters based on comic books continue to do big business for Marvel. Here’s hoping Phase Four is just as awesome.

 

 

Mobile App Marketing Costs Rising

Applications remain more popular than ever with users across both the iOS and Android fronts, although marketing them can be risky business, according to a new report from Fiksu.

Native Mobile has posted the results from said survey, indicating that companies are spending a high volume on expenses in order to assure loyalty amongst certain application users. According to the report, companies were spending as much as $2.25 per loyal user, quite a bit of cash considering the popularity of certain applications.

“Reaching an all-time high in September, the Cost Per Loyal User Index increased 21 percent to $2.25, representing a 34 percent rise year-over-year,” stated Fiksu. “This new high-water mark reflects the enduring trend of increasing activity and competition to capture loyal, engaged app users.”

Adoption rate also plays a huge part when it comes to adding a new audience for applications. According to Fiksu, the release of the new iPhone 6 models have spurred a “flurry of activity,” as it indicates that the devices have undergone a much higher adoption rate than last year’s iPhone 5. The difference, according to the company, is a 116 percent increase.

The report, located here, also highlights some other interesting details. The daily download volume of the top 200 ranked iOS apps, for example, managed to increase four percent in September, bringing a total of 5,5 million daily downloads. However, that’s actually a four percent decrease year-over-year, but Fiksu believes that’s based on the lesser number of applications available through the store (down from 300 to 150).

The cost per install also wavers for both companies. For September, Android ended up around the $1 mark, which Apple was shown a bit higher, closer to around $1.50. As a result, iOS spending has gone up about six percent from previous numbers, while Android has increased approximately 14 percent.

It’ll be interesting to see where these numbers end up next year — as well as how much companies are willing to spend to keep their consumers.

Image source

Microsoft Laps Sony With TV Ads

When it comes to advertising for consoles, Microsoft clearly has Sony in a corner – even though the PlayStation 4 continues to be a big-seller.

VentureBeat has reported that Microsoft has spent more than $47 million for Xbox One television ads on TV this year, including its most recent program for the just-launched game Sunset Overdrive. This information comes from data compiled by iSpot.TV. The total is over 50 percent more than Sony spent on its advertising, which is around $30 million.

As a result, Microsoft nearly has twice as many TV ads as its competitor, with 5,000 ads compared to Sony’s 3,000. Clearly, the company is trying to push its Xbox One this holiday season, and will no doubt have a similar campaign lined up for Halo: The Master Chief Collection, which is releasing next month.

While the companies haven’t commented on the practices they use with advertising, Microsoft clearly aims for more popular shows, scattered across 37 different networks and nearly 1,000 shows. Sony, meanwhile, only has an outreach of 25 networks and more than 500 shows, half the total.

As for the top shows that get such advertising, NFL Football games seem to be the leading factor, followed by the 2014 FIFA World Cup and AMC’s Talking Dead, a live follow-up to the popular The Walking Dead series. Sony has also found a certain place with ESPN’s SportsCenter series.

While Sony is leaning quite a bit on strong word-of-mouth, Microsoft isn’t fooling around this holiday season, as the company recently announced a $50 price drop for its Xbox One consoles, including popular bundles featuring Sunset Overdrive and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

It’ll be interesting to see if Sony intends to answer the marketing challenge with its own new marketing initiatives for the holidays.