Research - App Game Advertising

As I've seen in my textual analysis, there are indeed cases of TV/ youtube ads used to advertise smartphone apps. What I realise though is that the number of promotional adverts for adverts does not add up to anywhere near the total number of apps out there.

What that stands to reason is that there are more ways to advertise an app than just advertising; cheaper, easier, more viable ways. What also needs considering is that many apps are free to download, but in business terms that means no profit. That means there also must be a way to generate revenue off of app games.

These two points are what this research post is about. I'm going to look into some of the few relevant sources out there I could get my hands on, and work out the answers for these points. Since I'm not just doing a TV advert but a whole promotional package I need to look at other advertising formats. Now I already covered the various varieties of advertising, both new and traditional, in a previous research post. This time I'm looking at specifics, which of those varieties, if any, are used in app game promotion.

As usual I'll include my sources as links, so you can see where the information came from

The App Stores:

Apple's App Store
Windows App Store
Google Play Android App Store
Blackberry App Store

Let's start off with the one that's most obvious. You'd expect app games to be showcased effectively where they'd be bought from. There's an app store for each of the key platforms, they being iOS, Android, Windows, and Blackberry.

The store's main way of promoting ads comes in the form of charts for top 10s or top 25s or something of a similar nature. Through looking at each one they all showcase new apps, with a chart for the newest releases. They also highlight which games are the most frequently bought, and also differentiate between the free apps and the apps that cost money by having two popularity lists, one for each of them. Each app also has its ow page where all of its product description and overview can be found.

There's also the rate and review option for the apps. Anyone with an account can create a rating for the game, and also provide feedback on the game, be it praise, analysis or critique. There are also apps recommended by the store's editors, which can be seen on their own page

Each store also identifies that games are one of the most popular genres by signifying the game genre of apps in some way, shape or form.

Just going to look at the App store via google brings up a list of different app genres, and games alone has an entire list of sub-genres underneath it, something that none of the other genres have with the exception of the Newsstand genre. Clicking on the genre itself, or any of the sub-genres, brings up a list  of apps in order of their popularity.

When viewed from the Android site, the categories drop down list has games and all of its sub-genres taking up an entire side, whilst every other genre occupies the other. There's also a independent button for the genre that takes you directly to the game list, something none of the other categories have on the website.

The Blackberry site has a bar of main categories across its top, with games being the second option behind Apps in general, and also contains the charts for popular and new games. The Windows Store has a list of popular genres, with Games sitting at the top of the list and some of the popular games shown alongside it.

Web Advertising -

Facebook - Create your own Facebook Ads
Appnext, promoting apps through advertisements

When I was finding the sources, and was coming up rather short, I became thankful for the advertising section of google results. Normally I ignore it but through looking at the links I came across some actual sites that allowed you to create web adverts for apps, the sort of ads that you find as pop-ups along the sides of webpages.

Facebook Ads -

I remember back when I watched The Social Network, how Zuckerberg was completely against adverts being incorporated onto Facebook. The first link I looked at contradicted that entirely.

Because I have a Facebook account I was able to actually take a look at the ad creator and see what I myself could do with the function, what different types of things I could potentially promote.

They included adverts to websites and also encouraging what to do on the site, meaning I could potentially create an ad to promote this very blog, or possibly encourage comments that the blog is lacking in considerably. I could also try and increase the popularity of my posts on Facebook itself, or use it to get more likes. You can also use it to promote events that you know of.

If you own or are employed in a shopping company or store cha

in you can even use the ads to promote offers and deals on your products.

Most key to this topic however you can create promotional ads to let people know of your apps, and also encourage them to install it or boost activity on the app by showing off new features or challenges. I was tempted to promote MOBO through this method, just to add a bit more to the blog, but you actually need the app itself or its URL to exist, so I was cut off at that hurdle.

appnext -

This was the other link that I looked at. From news buzz, and its position on the Google search list, it seems to be a prominent source for advertising apps, be they games or not. Appnext is a technology platform that can be used to promote ads for apps, or so it says on its front page. I tried signing up myself to get a closer look but apparently both of my email addresses are already in use on the sight, so I couldn't get any further in.

What I could tell about the site was that it's primarily designed for people who have businesses in advertising. The software can be used to manage and promote apps efficiently. It portrays itself as a safe, trustworthy and self-controllable way to monetize any adverts you create.

The site is shown to be compatible with Facebook, Apple, Android and also Unity which, if you may remember, was the software I potentially would be using to make the game. iOS was the platform I hand in mind for the game as well, and I'd already looked at the Facebook advertising, so for me at least this may be an interesting site to keep tabs on.

Facebook Logo
appnext Logo