Why Facebook Mobile App Install Ads Are Suddenly Such a Huge Deal - WSJ
Adam Rifkin stashed this in Mobile Ads!
Stashed in: Mobile!, Facebook!, Candy Crush!, Advertising
There are two million apps in Apple’s app store alone, meaning to get noticed, game developers have to market their games or risk getting lost:
According to mobile gaming experts, while the average advertiser might pay 10 to 20 cents for ads on Facebook, game developers pay Facebook $1 to $2 per ad.
For very targeted mobile game ads, some game companies are willing to pay as much as $8, $10 or $20 per ad. That means, more often than not game advertisers end up soaking up most of the demand on Facebook.
“This is big business,” said Craig Palli, chief strategy officer at the mobile app marketing company Fiksu. “Our company is spending many millions a month on mobile app install ads for clients. Some game companies are spending $10,000 a day on marketing. And we’re not just talking indy studios. it’s King Digital [makers of the mega hit Candy Crush Saga] , it’s Zynga, it’s Disney., It’s Warner Bros. These are major household brands, and they’re spending millions of dollars per month marketing their games.”
Why are these companies paying such high prices to get users to download their games? Because a certain subset of mobile games–the whales, in Las Vegas parlance–are inclined to spend boatloads on extras within these games, like extra lives, in-game currency, weapons, and many other virtual items.
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“Even thought maybe 5 percent of game users convert to spend money, they make an entire ecosystem profitable,” said David Edri, vp of Engage, a division of the digital ad buying firm RadiumOne. “It’s unbelievable.”
Mr. Edri said that money continues to pour into gaming, and Facebook’s prices are going up in some cases as high as $8 to $10 per game install.
$8 to $10 PER INSTALL. Think about that.
And it's not just for games anymore.
Any app that wants installs can come to Facebook and advertise in the mobile feed.
4:25 PM May 06 2014