Mobile marketing has become the next big thing in online marketing and a lot of people think that the best way to do it is with games. There are certainly good reasons to use mobile game marketing but there are also some disadvantages that you are going to need to think about. Weighing the pros and cons of mobile game marketing can help you decide if it is a good idea for you.
The biggest pro of mobile game marketing is that it allows you to reach the demographic that most marketers want young adult males. They are the ones who play the games and that makes games the ideal way to target a highly sought after demographic. Young men are hard to advertise to because they tend to have a short attention span and they are moving away from traditional means of advertising it is very difficult to reach them by television these days for example, mainly because they don't watch nearly as much television as previous generations.
The other big pro for mobile game marketing is that it allows you to get and hold people's attention more easily than most other forms of marketing allow. Games are usually played in leisure time and they are something that players tend to devote their whole concentration to. That means that they are prime targets for advertising. The reality of most advertising is that most people are so used to seeing the ads and are usually only half paying attention anyway that they usually don't even notice them. This is less of an issue with mobile game marketing since there isn't nearly as much competition for people's attention.
The biggest con of mobile game marketing is that the growth of the market seems to have stagnated. While the growth of the mobile phone market has been huge the growth of the games market really hasn't kept pace. That would seem to indicate that people are losing interest in mobile games or are finding other ways to entertain themselves. It would also seem to suggest that there are probably better ways to market to mobile users than using games and that these other methods will probably pass games by in the not too distant future.
The other big con with advertising on mobile games is that you are dealing with dozens of different wireless companies and handset makers, most of whom would like to get a piece of that market themselves. There is a good chance that you will find yourself being pushed out at some point as the bigger players decide that they want to be involved in the market. There are a lot of very large companies all competing for business here and the little guy is probably going to get crushed in the process. This is one of the biggest differences between mobile marketing and internet marketing and it is something you need to be aware of before you jump in.