Ampulum recently ran a survey of people from social networks, gamer forums, and industry mailing lists for their mobile gaming habits. The results showed that overwhelmingly, the discovery of their favorite mobile games were coming from friends’ word of mouth recommendations, and app store searches and features were primary drivers of sales.
“The study showed that game reviews, discussion forums, and even Google web search all ranked ahead of discovery via in-game ads within another mobile game,” writes ‘Steve’ at Ampulum. “This was self-reported data, so perhaps it’s not surprising if people underestimated how much they’re influenced by ads. The size of the gap vs. other discovery methods is hard to ignore, however. When asked directly what fraction of their favorite mobile games were discovered that way, 70 percent of respondents denied discovering any of their favorites via in-game ads.”
Facebook and Twitter were also recognized discovery methods. An interesting finding by looking at the ages of respondents, it showed that discussion forums are a young person’s venue, with those aged 20-29 more than 3x more likely to report forums among the ways they discovered their favorite mobile games.
“If you’re a new developer with a quality game that you hope will become someone’s favorite, but don’t have a multi-million dollar budget for in-game ad spending, take heart,” noted ‘Steve’. “Your target audience is more likely to discover your game through other less expensive channels anyway. So polish that icon until it shines and hone your description text to perfection, to ensure your game stands out in app store search results. Leverage social media, forums, and any other tool you can find to get your existing players talking about the game with their friends. Cultivate relationships with the gaming press, and do everything in your power to make sure your game is reviewed well. Once you’ve optimized all those channels, then you can start to ramp up in-game ad spending to drive further growth.”
Source: Ampulum.com
