Mobile content provider Modtones is reaching mobile gamers through in-game advertising network Greystripe Inc.’s latest offering, GameJump.com.
The site at www.gamejump.com offers free ad-supported games for cell phones. Moderati’s Modtones will run full-screen ads on games in the network that read “Drop some beats on your phone from Modtones” to drive traffic to and increase purchases from its wireless application protocol site.
“We haven’t found very many effective outlets for marketing on mobile phones,” said Cindy Mesaros, vice president of marketing at Moderati, San Francisco. “Greystripe seems promising.”
The brand also hopes to increase awareness of its products like polyphonic ring tones, song tones, sound effects, voice tones and wallpaper, particularly among 18-to-24-year-old users.
“The mobile gamer audience is a good match,” Ms. Mesaros said. “The overlap [with GameJump.com’s audience] is good because people are already mobile content users, and their demo is 65 percent 18-34.”
Moderati will measure clickthrough rates and sales to determine the success of the campaign. GameJump’s AdWrap platform is self-serving for advertisers and provides reports on the performance of the ads.
“The clickthrough rate is the most important metric for us,” Ms. Mesaros said. “The rates have been good, but we know that Greystripe is just starting to build inventory so we are looking forward to having them deliver more of our ads.”
GameJump.com offers about 80 games from 17 different publishers including Ghost Hunter RPG, Sudoku, Spellboys, Slot Machine, Texas Hold’em Poker and Mini Golf. Advertisers place full-screen pre- and post-roll ads and can choose three types of clickthrough models: click-to-call, click-to-WAP site or click-to-jump page.
Greystrike CEO Michael Chang said that one unspecified advertiser with the system had seen a 30 percent click-to-jump rate since GameJump’s launch on Aug. 16. He declined to share the aggregated clickthrough rates of the five paying advertisers on the system.
“Because of the newness [of the mobile medium] the action rates are really high,” Mr. Chang said. “It’s a casual gaming experience and so users are really receptive to clicking through an ad.”
Customers download games from the Web site at a computer or from a cell phone site at http://gjmp.tw. Carriers may charge customers for data usage fees to download the games and ads, as well as for receiving text-messaged download links. However, they are not a direct part of the GameJump transaction.
“We’ve separated the carrier from the payment to the publisher,” Mr. Chang said. “We have no relationship, and almost no need for a relationship, with the carrier for our business model.”
GameJump hopes to reach 500,000 end users in the future, Mr. Chang said.
“We’re always on the lookout for innovative ways to market Modtones,” Ms. Mesaros said. “We’re working with Greystripe as an experiment to see if in-game advertising works for us.”
