Mobile Apps Struggle To Keep Users Engaged

BY

While the abundance of apps on the Apple App Store and Google Play indicate a great deal of variety and content to choose from, that doesn’t mean that all of them manage to stick around for the long-term.

According to a recent report from Re/Code (based on numbers provided by Adobe), mobile apps manage to achieve about half their lifetime usage overall in just the first six months. After that, some of them just have a tendency of fading out of the spotlight — and staying out of it. Roughly a quarter of all available apps are opened just one time, per the report.

“As if getting a mobile app developed and installed isn’t hard enough, keeping users engaged with it may be the biggest challenge of all,” Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst for Adobe Digital Index, explained. “It’s a very crowded space and brands are vying for consumers that are becoming increasingly more selective.”

Some marketers have even gone to the point to put together retarget ads that attempt to get mobile users to revisit apps they may have already installed, instead of advertising new ones. Techniques including notifications and tapping hardware-features (like the fingerprint reader on the iPhone 5 models) assist with long-term usage.

As you can see from this chart, games aren’t the only ones affected from long-term waning. Apps based around media, finance and shopping also take a dive after just a few months, provided they don’t have features for users to come back to.

Adobe also reported the following items from its report:

Smartphones account for 82 percent of app launches, as compared to 17 percent from tablets; a year ago, smartphones made up 78 percent of mobile app launches.

Smartphones account for a quarter of visits to U.S. shopping websites, but only nine percent of total revenue. Tablets, meanwhile, account for 11 percent of revenue and 11 percent of visits.

Chrome had been narrowing the gap on mobile Safari in terms of browser share until the Sept. 2014 iPhone 6 launch. Apple’s market share has been widening ever since. Combined, the two browsers account for 95 percent of mobile share, with BlackBerry, Firefox, Opera and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer fighting for table scraps.

More information on the report can be found here.

Chinese Mobile Market Will Eclipse U.S. This Year, Be Worth $11.1 Billion By 2019

BY

The mobile game market is definitely booming especially in China, with free-to-play games and other titles getting plenty of attention.

A new report from GamesIndustry International suggests that the popularity of mobile games may be bigger than expected, as domestic revenue is set to eclipse similar numbers in the United States.

Based on numbers provided by Niko Partners, domestic mobile game revenue in China will reach $5.5 billion this year. That’s a $2.2 billion increase from numbers reported last year, indicating that the mobile market is bigger than ever overseas.

SuperData also chimed in with its own numbers, stating that revenue from the U.S. mobile game market will reach $4.5 billion for this year. That’s still big, but obviously the USA is not the leading country anymore. That gap could continue to grow, especially with China’s large population.

Niko indicates that the number of Chinese mobile gamers will reach a whopping 420 million by year’s end, a jump over the 366 million reported for the first half of the year. In addition, revenue could reach an even higher stat in just a few years’ time, estimated to reach $11.1 billion by 2019.

Tencent seems to be the leading source of mobile entertainment in China, with a 50 percent market share of the overall mobile outreach for last year. While more foreign companies are hopping on board (including a few Western developers), Niko Partners suggests using a little caution. “It is important to evaluate what voids there are in Chinese culture, and then match game development to those as well as to the gamer behavior and characteristics of a good mobile game in a popular genre,” said Lisa Cosmas Hanson, managing partner and founder of Niko Partners, in a statement.

“With that mobile game developers may find their way to the next big Chinese hit game, because hoping to make it big with an international title lobbed to a Chinese publisher for localization is not an effective path to success.”

Why You Should Be Paying Close Attention To Interactive Video

BY

Having a video message in advertising is one thing — but taking it up a notch and making it interactive is another, it seems. A pair of reports have popped up, indicating that interactive video isn’t just a crucial element in today’s marketing game — it’s actually a must.

First up is this report from Social Times, which shows that, based on stats provided by 17 Production, interactive video is greatly effective — even more so than regular video.

For instance, the team indicated that 60 percent of people prefer video over reading text as a whole, and also keeps visitors on a website longer. It also provides better memory-based content than the written word, thanks to a more stylish display.

Interactive video, however, goes a level above, as users can click, swipe and engage with call-to-action overlays and elements, according to the article. The band Coldplay made a good example of this with their recorded clip for “Ink,” which can be found here. It did so fundamentally well, it earned a 2015 Webby Award for Best Use of Interactive Video.

The notes point out that a combination of imagination and the right technology partner can help marketers succeed with interactive video. It noted that a number of eCommerce brands have already benefitted from huge traffic spikes, particularly ASOS, a site that provides a “view catwalk” button on its product pages, so that consumers can actually see what they’re buying in motion – not just a static picture.

Brands can benefit in a number of ways, including these key factors, according to 17:

  • Audience target/content type — we already know video is most engaging, so take it up a notch
  • Ad content and brand goals — you get to decide how consumers interact, and being creative gives you an advantage
  • Degree of difficulty of the “ask” —the easier the better, right

Part of the popularity of interactive video has come from YouTube Annotations, as users could easily interact with videos. The Annotations in themselves have proven to be far more effective than the typical tags, descriptions and titles that have come with said videos.

More details on this particular report can be found here.

As for the second source page that points out the popularity of interactive video, eMarketer recently published numbers that indicate that this format is watched through all the way to the end.

As you can see from this chart, the rates for a started, halfway viewed and fully viewed interactive video are through the roof, particularly in Australia and New Zealand. The United States’ stats aren’t too shabby either, with 84 percent of viewers starting a video, and 70 percent watching them all the way through to the very end.

As a result, more and more companies are tackling such campaigns, putting more dollars towards ad channels of this type. eMarketer estimates that U.S. digital video ad spending will increase 41 percent overall this year to $5.9 billion, and will go even beyond that by 2018 to $12.3 billion. And interactive will take up a good chunk with that.

Now it’s just a matter of seeing how many more companies jump on board.

Adult Swim Brings The Drive-In Theater Experience Back For Promotion

BY

Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim spin-off network (which airs during late night all week long) is no stranger to giving its fans more than they expect, as it’s proven with its innovative Instagram program. Now, Adult Swim is bringing back the long-forgotten drive-in movie format for a newly introduced promotion one that’s bound to be a hit in time for the fall season.

Adweek has reported that the Adult Swim Drive-In, a six-week event that will visit 15 cities in the U.S., will kick off in September 17. Attendees 18 and up are welcome to attend (after RSVP’ing at the official Adult Swim site), and will be able to see a variety of unaired episodes from its programming line-up, including Rick and Morty, Robot Chicken, Squidbillies, Mike Tyson Mysteries and Tim and Eric’s Bedtime Stories, among others.

Viewers will be able to watch in comfort via an inflatable screen, and partake in trivia to win Adult Swim-related prizes. There will also be food trucks providing free food at each stop, along with a VIP viewing area (sponsored by Cricket Wireless) that includes free popcorn and candy from Hershey’s Jolly Rancher.

The tour will also tie in with the forthcoming horror-comedy Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse in some stops, and Sony will provide a PlayStation Vue-labeled food truck, along with the opportunity to win PlayStation 4 consoles and bundle packs.

“Our strategy for events is to create something that allows our fans to connect with us and connect with each other, and to build on the strong relationship we’ve established with them through the linear network and our digital and social presence,” said Amantha Walden, senior director, talent and events, Adult Swim. “The Drive-In tour idea stemmed from our desire to create a fun, easily portable experience that focused on our content and gave our fans a special experience.”

“These events provide a fantastic opportunity to more closely align our advertising partners with the Adult Swim brand and help them to get in front of a desirable, hard-to-reach audience of millennial consumers,” said Joe Hogan, senior vice president of Turner Emerging Consumers ad sales at Turner Broadcasting.

The tour will cover a number of locations, including Pittsburgh (the first stop on the 17), Charlotte, Houston, San Antonio, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The final stop will be in Sacramento on Halloween, October 31.

Adult Swim tested out the drive-in concept before, at a previous event in Santa Monica back in March. Like its Fun House tour from last year, as well as the Adult Swim Block Parties and Ragbag of Jollification College Tour events before it, it turned out to be a big hit. The same is likely for the tour, especially with more popular faces like Rick and Morty (fast becoming one of the more entertaining shows on the network) and Mike Tyson.

Plus, customers won’t have to worry about wearing out their car battery a constant fear with some older drive-ins.

News Startups Are Focusing On Ad Viewability

BY

Publishers and advertisers are always trying to find a way to make viewability a factor with their ads, to the point that they re not obtrusive, but still effective. However, some startup sites believe that the solution isn t advertising for the site, but rather the site itself.

AdWeek reports that a number of startup-oriented news sites are working on web designs that actually cater to advertising, instead of having to work around it. One example is LittleThings, a viral news site that targets a female demographic. It s been popular thus far, with 36.3 million unique visitors, up from 8.5 million the previous year. It s one of the sites that intends to introduce a new ad-friendly design of its website later in the year. “Because we’re only a year old, we have the benefit of seeing the challenges and the mistakes that others have made,” explained Gretchen Tibbits, LittleThings COO. “We were able to fill in some [holes] from day one.”

With this program, the idea is to give advertisers better date when it comes to have effective a campaign is with an audience. Newsfeed style ads will be able to fit in-between article paragraphs, and advertisers would pay dependent on how the entire piece of creative would be in view. Preroll and branded video would be utilized to an extent as well, with advertisers paying something similar depending on viewability.

However, it s not an entirely effective solution, as there s a hurdle with mobile devices. 80 percent of site traffic comes from the likes of smartphones and tablets, and with data-tracking cookies removing ads and smaller screens, viewability could be troublesome. “Because mobile experiences are tightly controlled with cookies, it makes the problem technically extremely difficult to solve,” said Andrew Frank, an analyst at Gartner.

Forrester Research senior analyst Susan Bidel added that even though some marketers have overcome the first round of issues with advertising, “any new publisher should expect that advertisers are going to insist on 100 percent viewability,” she explained. “If the publisher cannot deliver 100 percent viewability, the advertiser will pay for only viewable ads.”

So now it s just a matter of finding a solution. We ll see how it pans out over the next few months.

Now Hiring This Week: September 2nd

BY

[a]listdaily is 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.

  • Wargaming – Senior Product Marketing Manager (Emeryville, Calif.)
  • Wargaming – Product Marketing Manager (Emeryville, Calif.)
  • Wargaming – Global Product Marketing Manager (Emeryville, Calif.)
  • NBC Universal – VP, Cosumer Marketing (Hialeah, Florida)
  • Ayzenberg – Digital Marketing Beat Writer (Pasadena, Calif.)
  • Ayzenberg – Account Executive (Pasadena, Calif.)
  • Ayzenberg – Media Planner (Pasadena, Calif.)

For last week’s [a]list jobs postings, click here. Have a position you’d like to place with us Email us at pr@ayzenberg.com.

How ‘Guild Wars 2’ Goes Free And Keeps Players Happy

BY

ArenaNet, publisher and developer of the Guild Wars massively multiplayer roleplaying game (MMORPG) franchise, made a momentous announcement at PAX Prime this weekend: The core version of Guild Wars 2 is now available to play for free, effective immediately. This transition to free-to-play comes nearly three years after the game launched, and after the game has sold more than five million copies. Additionally, ArenaNet announced that the first expansion for Guild Wars 2, the highly anticipated Heart of Thorns, will be available on October 23 of this year.

“We believe the buy to play, subscription-free model for MMOs is good for players, and it’s good for developers,” said Mike O’Brien, co-founder and president of ArenaNet. “It gets a little tricky when a buy-to-play MMO introduces an expansion pack, leaving new players guessing about what they need to buy in order to start playing with their friends. As we get ready to release our first expansion for Guild Wars 2, we want to ensure that we keep a simple business model where new players can play the core game for free, while all players need only purchase one thing — Heart of Thorns — to get access to all of our new and future content.”

“In making Guild Wars 2 free, we’re not switching business models to a traditional free-to-play game, and we’re not aggressively monetizing free players through microtransactions,” said O’Brien. “We’re making the base game free because we’re confident that anyone who loves Guild Wars 2 will consider buying Heart of Thorns, continuing their experience into the expansion and beyond with Living World and our newly announced raids.”

Steve Fowler, head of global marketing for ArenaNet, spoke with [a]listdaily about this transition and what it means for ArenaNet.

Steve Fowler

Making Guild Wars 2 free is a big step. Was this something you had planned for a long time?

Yes. Planning for something as big as this is a full studio effort and in order for it to be as well delivered as it was it really took tremendous amounts of time and care. We had many discussions around how to balance the Play for Free version of Guild Wars 2 for both new players and veterans alike. We wanted to ensure that new players got as close to the real Guild Wars 2 experience as possible, as we are confident that if they just put time in and play they will fall in love with it and naturally want to purchase Heart of Thorns. For veterans we needed to ensure there were significant protections put in place to keep the game they have been playing and love the same as it always was.

It looks like you’ve taken great care to keep the game balanced, both for new players and for existing players, and to provide a good value for your paying customers. Is this a difficult balance to strike, and do you anticipate changes in the future as you gain more knowledge from the customers?

This was our primary concern. We have always believed in the Buy to Play business model and when we started exploring taking the core game free we wanted to approach it from this desire to retain what is great about Buy to Play. In addition to what I say above about vets and new player experiences we wanted to ensure that the business model we chose would make sense. The end product, we think, has come very close to balancing this.

We have not changed any of the fundamentals of our business model. There are no subscription fees, we have absolutely no changes in our Gem store, we do not sell power or time and these things are fundamental to Guild Wars 2 and needed to be retained when we began planning our Play for Free offer.

For new players the value is tremendous as we are in essence offering the full Guild Wars 2 experience that we launched in 2012 for free. This is the same game that won multiple game of the year awards and to this day holds a 90 percent + Metactritic review score. For a triple-A product to offer this much entertainment for free we think is somewhat unprecedented.

There have been a number of MMORPGs in the past few years that have transitioned to free-to-play. What have you learned from their experiences, both positive and negative?

We did a significant amount of research and analyzed strengths and weaknesses in different approaches to going free. Although several companies have already made a transition from a paid model to a free model, none of them were exactly the same as where we came from. I think what we did is unique in several ways.

First and foremost, Guild Wars 2′s business is extremely healthy. We recently announced that we have surpassed 5 million units sold and are about to launch our first expansion with Heart of Thorns. So while some companies see going free as a means to save their business we did not approach the transition from this need.

Secondly, we have the advantage of having our “Buy to Play” business model that allows us to make the decisions we’ve made and, as discussed earlier, this allowed us to not have to make drastic changes to our monetization systems and offer new players tremendous value.

Another unique approach we made was the choice of announcing and launching at the same time. We could only do this because of these unique advantages. It allowed our community to be our mouthpieces. Free to Play comes with some negative pre-conceptions and the best way we could think of dispelling the negativity that players might speculate against was to allow them to log in and see for themselves that it’s the same Guild Wars 2 they know and love, just with lots more players.

Now that the basic Guild Wars 2 game is free, how does that alter your marketing strategy How do you plan to get the word out to the audience of potential players?

This is a great question. It is actually a huge advantage for our marketing department as it allows us the ultimate initial sales pitch. What better way to sell Heart of Thorns than to have someone fall in love with the core game Once they come to see how amazing the core game is we think it is only natural for them to want the expansion and continue their journey.

As for tactics to accomplish this, our marketing team now will have access to the best sales tool possible: the game itself. We don’t need to rely as much on expensive paid media and earned and owned marketing tactics but rather use the game itself as a means to upgrade to Heart of Thorns.

Fan tweet after Guild Wars 2 goes free

What’s been the immediate response to your announcement about Guild Wars 2, and what expectations do you have for the game over the next few months?

The response has been overwhelmingly positive with several news outlets claiming that is could possibly be the best free game offering in the business. But more than that our community has been absolutely amazing in welcoming new players with open arms. This weekend we literally had thousands of veteran players in our starter zones setting up welcoming committees and helping new players get started.

The few naysayers that don’t take the time to read what our Play for Free product is all about and just assume we are a typical Free to Play game are quickly corrected online when they speak out by our fans and amazing community.

Mobcrush Gets $11 Million For Mobile Streaming

BY

Mobcrush is about to change the way people stream their mobile gaming sessions, with a forthcoming app that will make it easy to show off game sessions with just the push of a button. Now, it’s secured $11 million in funding that will help assure its success.

The Santa Monica-based company has raised $11 million in funding from a variety of investors, led by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, according to VentureBeat. The full fundraising details are here, including other partners like Advancit Capital, First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital, Rincon Venture Partners and Crosscut Ventures as Venture Capital investors, along with Raine Ventures LLC as a Private Equity & Venture Capital.

With these funds, Mobcrush hopes that its app will provide some serious competition on the streaming front, where Twitch currently has a large user base, and YouTube is knocking on the door with its own gaming service.

KPCB shares our vision for how the mobile landscape is evolving, and sees the massive demand for an easy, accessible streaming solution for gamers on the platform, said Royce Disini, CEO for Mobcrush, in a statement. As our company grows and we get closer to officially launching our product, we re humbled to see the tremendous support from our investors, but also our partners, community and players.

Mobcrush is currently in beta for iOS and Mac OSX, and set to release for Android and Windows very soon.

We spent some time in the Santa Monica area and came across them, and [we] also met them through our seed investor partners, said Mike Abbott, a general partner at KPCB, speaking with VentureBeat. We have an increasing conviction in the popularity of eSports and how it is intersecting with mobile.

Mobcrush has several key members on its team to help with the app, including Google Play games lead Koh Kim, as well as Apple App Store game lead Greg Essig and former Xbox community veteran Eric Doty.

The competition is tough, but finding success isn’t out of reach. The key is what does the community want to do with the content, and these founders have a good understanding of the services and community, Abbott added.

We’ll see just how effective the Mobcrush app is when it launches sometime this year.

Video Length Matters To Millennials

BY

The popularity of streaming video is as strong as ever, whether users prefer something that runs in a span of minutes, or watching their favorite show on a “binge” basis for hours on end. It’s also picking up quite a bit with millennials, especially on Tumblr, where autoplay looping videos have picked up in popularity.

Max Sebela, Tumblr’s creative strategy manager, recently spoke with eMarketer about the effectiveness of this video, and how millennials are staying engaged.

“We’re seeing two different sides,” said Sebela, when it came to audience. “On one side, Tumblr is a curation tool for discovering the best of the best in user-generated digital video. On the other side, as we’ve relaunched and began thinking about the way users can make video on Tumblr, we are increasingly seeing users make original content with our player, which creates videos that loop.

“We’re also seeing people take advantage of silent autoplay. The video might be designed to be consumed with sound eventually, but the first experience with it is likely going to be silent, so that requires drawing people in with a silent animation that’s going to make them want to go deeper, hit that unmute button and watch.”

Sebela also broke down what key behaviors advertisers should watch for when it comes to millennials’ video habits. “One of the most interesting habits that hasn’t fully been cracked yet is what it means to be silent, first and foremost. All of a sudden, the initial experience of viewing a video is more like seeing a GIF or a silent loop.

“As always, you want to design video consistent with where it’s going to be seen. Instead of someone actually clicking ‘play’ and opting in to watch, you’re talking about a big vertical feed that has all kinds of content — standing out in that native experience is 100 percent key. How do you do that You burst out of that feed with something different that stops a user in their scroll. This is definitely a challenge, but it’s also a real opportunity,” he explained.

Sebela also broke down how video is broadening for millennials as a whole. ” We’re moving away from the concept of video being important and instead thinking more about how much time there is to be entertained by content. Consumers have a certain amount of time over the course of their day to experience leisure, and all digital video — still content and animated content —competes for millennials’ time.

“Millennials are not thinking about medium or format — they’re thinking about where they want to spend time discovering things, being entertained and ultimately seeing video.”

But what about effective advertising formats on the site ” [It’s a new] era of video being either very short-form, meaning less than 15 seconds, or much longer. We see really rich engagement with video posts that are designed to be looped. These are being shared in the same way as GIFs, which are familiar to both advertisers and consumers.”

Sebela continued, “We’ve also seen a lot of success with pieces of long-form content. These are less likely to be shared, but they receive a lot of “likes” and a lot of positive affirmation. If you’re designing to be shared, short form is amazing. If you’re looking to get a story out that is going to resonate with a user and send a complete message from your brand, long form is the way to go.”

The full interview can be found here.

On a related note, Freewheel just released its full Video Monetization Report for the second quarter for 2015, and it can be found here. It’s a lengthy read, but here are a couple of highlights worth noting from the report.

As you can see from the chart, long-form, short-form and live streaming video all have strengths on the programmer front, running just about even (long-form has a slight advantage at 35 percent). When it comes to digital pure-play, however, short form video has the strong advantage with 80 percent, followed by long-form, mid-form and live.

This second chart shows how popular live, long form, short form and mid form videos are in terms of length, and live has a much bigger strength with 30 seconds, while long-form has an even greater percentage. Mid form and short form, however, show a preference in the 15 second mark.

 

Google Debuts New Logo

BY

The times, they are a-changin’. After 17 years, Google has changed its routine logo into something a little more modern with the times — and that keeps its brand more consistent across the new divisions and product lines that resulted from Google’s recent reorganization.

After sticking with a logo that has kept a colorful but somewhat plain typeface for almost two decades, the company changed it this morning, going with a more contemporary appearance, but still keeping the same colorful motif, as you can see above.

VentureBeat initially reported on the logo, stating that Google changed it in an effort to revamp its “identity family,” so that people would be able to recognize it better in terms of design branding. This includes seeing it on computers, phones, televisions, watches and more. The video below highlights just how the logo has “evolved.”

As to why the change was specifically made, the company released the following statement:

“It doesn’t simply tell you that you’re using Google, but also shows you how Google is working for you. For example, new elements like a colorful Google mic help you identify and interact with Google whether you’re talking, tapping or typing. Meanwhile, we’re bidding adieu to the little blue ‘g’ icon and replacing it with a four-color ‘G’ that matches the logo.”

“This isn’t the first time we’ve changed our look and it probably won’t be the last, but we think today’s update is a great reflection of all the ways Google works for you across Search, Maps, Gmail, Chrome and many others. We think we’ve taken the best of Google (simple, uncluttered, colorful, friendly), and recast it not just for the Google of today, but for the Google of the future.”

The company also released a couple of animated GIF’s to show the subtle differences between the old and new logos, which can be found below.

“Everyone who’s going anywhere is going mobile, and that means making things more streamlined, easier to read and more intuitive to interact with. Google’s new makeover makes the most of this, with simplified letterforms, iconic imagery and colorful, eye-catching animations. Bravo, Google,” said Ayzenberg’s Stu Pope, regarding the rebranding.

The news comes on the heels of the company’s recent Alphabet announcement, which will bring another parent company into the fold sometime over the next few months. How that will be effective has yet to be seen, but we’re likely to see more details — and not just the cryptic “G is for Google” — very soon.