Measuring and maximising ROI in mobile game advertising

India today is the world’s second largest gaming market, however, in terms of app downloads India is the world’s largest mobile gaming market. As per Statista, the country recorded 421 million online gamers in the year 2022, an 8% growth over 2021. This number is expected to reach over 442 million by 2023.

Pegged at $3.02 billion in 2023, Mordor Intelligence’s report expects the gaming market size in India to reach $6.26 billion by 2028, at a CAGR of 15.68%. The report states that the growing IT infrastructure, driven by the rising use of smartphones and high-speed Internet, is one of the major factors driving the market growth rate in the country.

Emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, wider implementation of 5G are poised to bring about a new renaissance in the country’s gaming industry.

At the same time, the industry is also facing some challenges – the most pertinent of them being the 28% GST for the gaming industry. There are also legal issues, wherein the courts in some states are banning some formats of money-based gaming and often the demarcation of skill-based and online betting games is blurred.

The third edition of GAMEXX 2023 turned the spotlight on ‘Maximising ROI’. India currently boosts of approximately 450 million to 500 million individual gamers, with most of them using their mobile phones for gaming. In terms of game downloads, India beat its closest competitors, Brazil, in terms of Google Playstore, and China, in terms of iOS, by more than double in 2022. From time spent perspective, India’s average is about 8 and a half hours per week. Thus, ‘Measuring and Maximising ROI in mobile game advertising’, becomes an important topic for discussion. This panel discussion was chaired by Shubhamoy

Das, National Director, GroupM ESP, and the panelists included:

Megha Nair, Senior Vice President, Digital Media Planning, Carat India
Shayakh Mirza, Vice President of Digital Planning, PHD Media India
Vineet Shah, General Manager, Madison Digital

When asked about what ROI means in the context of mobile game advertising,

Shayakh Mirza replied, “Keeping the basics in mind and without going much into the problem statements, as far as developers are concerned, there are primarily two targets that they are gunning for: one is ‘Monetisation’ – as to how much they are monetising, and what every ad impression is yielding for them and hence, what are the ad revenues in terms of growth. These monetisation can be based on advertiser spends or it can be based on our purchases, etc.

The second is the lifetime value of what LTV a particular user or an ad is generating and yielding. When it comes to advertisers, obviously things change because then it is about how much we should be spending and what is basically my yield against spending for.”

Vineet Shah noted that advertising on gaming can seldom go wrong in terms of the client safety parameters due to the kind of environment it features on. “Mainly, it is more brand safe than the other mediums. However, there are four parameters that I would like to say which are quite important from a measurement point of view:

An unmuted invention in a gaming ad
Accuracy in terms of the on-target audience reached, considering all the signals for gaming probability
Users’ sentiments while consuming the ads are a key element to measure, considering a lot gaming ads would be rewarded inventories
The mind measure movement in terms of awareness.

Partners like IAS MOLES Neilson can help us to measure the parameters.”

Speaking on interactive and playable ads and their impact, Megha Nair said, “There are a lot of factors that come into play apart from higher engagement, because users get a chance to engage with these ads because they actually provide interactive winnings. The other thing which also happens is they improve conversion rates, because these ads are playable and the users get a chance to actually interact. Thirdly, it is a better user experience; users appreciate if you give them the opportunity to interact with the content.”

Nair further said, “From a marketer’s perspective, it will help you refine and target ad creators. And it can result in better ROI. Marketers need to make sure that theory ads are tailored to suit the target audience and the specific game or the ad that they are promoting. After doing these, it is important that we are checking and monitoring the metrics and conversion rates rather than just doing it for the sake of testing. So, basically interactive and playable ads impact positively.”

These are edited excerpts. For the complete panel discussion, please watch below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZgsK4Ar7PQ