Gamification of Mobile Advertising (appia.com)

Gamification has been around for decades. Anything that can leverage elements of a game to drive engagement or behavior has some aspect of gamification. Examples include employee of the month programs, loyalty programs, and apps like Foursquare. Gamification has been a hot topic in the advertising space, particularly the mobile advertising space for some time now. But how effective is it at driving high lifetime value (LTV) users?

Most people are inherently competitive. Introducing an element into an app where users can earn badges or other virtual awards will foster competition and encourage users to keep returning to the app. Recurring engagement and higher LTV is one of the toughest challenges for mobile marketers.

Just as gamification works within apps themselves, it can also be a key component in your mobile advertising strategy. Encouraging engagement through gaming ad formats is something mobile marketers have not widely adopted. The gamification of mobile advertising is not only attractive to mobile users; it is just as intriguing to mobile marketers as well. Allowing users to play mini-games in an ad without leaving their app or mobile website inherently encourages engagement.

There are several insights to consider when implementing a gamification element into your mobile ad strategy. When using game ad formats, it is important to allow the user to experience just enough game play to get them interested in downloading the full version of the game or app. Allowing users to play for too long will discourage them from installing. Making the game experience too short may not be engaging enough to drive an install. Additionally, having too many game ads within your app or mobile website can become distracting to the end user, so be selective with the number of game ads to avoid fatigue.

While ads with a mobile game aspect may not be for every mobile marketer, they have the potential to be huge revenue drivers for savvy marketers. For those who aren’t ready to jump into complex gaming ad formats, implementing a small element of gamification into your app could be a great place to test the waters. Adding badges encourages return users or adding a timer to levels within a game creates a sense of urgency. There are countless ways to integrate gamification into your mobile apps.