Christian Facey, CEO and Co-Founder of Ukie member Audiomob gives some insights into the next trend in mobile monetisation.
Here at AudioMob, we adore two things. Games and audio have always fascinated us. Almost every member of our team has a deep affinity with both, whether they develop mobile games on the side, or produce hip hop in their spare time.
So many of our favourite games are defined by how present music or quality audio is in the experience of playing them, from the Forza Horizon series to Monument Valley. But we started to think about how else audio might serve games, and improve things for both players and developers.
Ads in free-to-play games are understandably divisive. Or perhaps, rather, we all have a complicated relationship with the ads model. Rewarded video ads keep games free without asking players to put down money. Meanwhile, they let game developers make a living, without having to design around in-app purchasing and other payment models. So far, so great. The thing is, of course, that video ads often intrude on the gaming experience; that's something that can frustrate players and developers.
Ads, then, offer tremendous potential, but with one major concern: that idea of interruptions. A player otherwise besotted by your game might quickly move on, simply because of the frustration a video ad causes. Still, Unity previously found that 71% of players prefer rewarded video ads to IAP. That's pretty stark. Players would rather have their game interrupted than throw down money on in-app purchases.
That got us thinking about the potential if ads could replace IAP without interrupting a game as aggressively as a rewarded video. Then we started considering how audio-only ads could do just that. Somewhat to our surprise, audio ads for mobile games seem almost entirely unexplored as a concept. But we're convinced there's a lot of potential; for players and for game makers.
The concept is simple, really. An audio ad can run while a player continues to play a game. They don't need to pause the action to watch a video, or step away from any point of flow or momentum they've reached in their playing experience. Audio ads can be triggered by specific in-game events, and take a reward or standard format. There's even ways audio ads can be deeply integrated into a game itself. Titles that include fictional in-game radio stations, for example, offer an obvious place where a real audio ad could monetise while simultaneously bringing realism to a game world, all without interrupting gameplay, and even avoiding clashes with a particular aesthetic or atmosphere. Ads are part of day-to-day reality, so they really can bring a sense of that realism to games; if they are integrated meaningfully.
From all our research, we're confident audio ads can lift retention, deliver reliable monetisation, improve review scores, and give developers a better way to pay their bills.
We'd love to tell you audio ads in games is a proven, snowballing trend, but the reality is that it is pretty much unexplored. However, beyond games, significant interest in audio ads is building. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), Digital Audio Exchange (DAX) and MTM recently found that 85% of UK media agencies and advertisers are planning to increase their investment in audio ads at least through to mid-2020. In a separate study the IAB also saw that audio ad-spend in the US grew by 30% through 2019. Meanwhile, in the wake of smart speakers becoming common in homes all over the world, VCs are eagerly investing in voice startups of all kinds. Thanks to a boom in the likes of podcasts, streaming platforms and virtual assistants, audio is once again at the forefront of many technological trends.
All that inspired us to think about how audio ads for mobile games could present a tremendous opportunity. That's how we found ourselves developing our own audio ad tech, working on a Unity SDK, and partnering with developers large and small to explore the potential, and the best ways to make this approach to monetisation work.
We could develop our tech in isolation, making assumptions about what works based on our own experience. Really, though, we want to explore this opportunity with the game industry. That's why we've joined Ukie, for one. We've also been talking with all the games makers and publishers we can about building audio advertising that works for players and developers, that is fair and open, and supports the game industry. So if you want to help us shape the audio advertising opportunity, get in touch. We're not here to sell you our product; we just want to work with you to better understand how we can make ads work for everybody.
And we'll see you at a Ukie event soon, whether it's online or in-person. You can ask us about audio ads, or we can just talk about music and games. We're always happy to do either.