Thanks to Apple, the peak of the incentivised download business appears to have been late 2012.
Still, paying people with virtual currency to download your game (or app) remains a viable option for many companies.
As pointed out several times at GDC 2013, any publisher with money will spend it across as many channels as they can when they have a game to promote.
A little encouragement
And as a new case study from Tapjoy and 5th Planet shows, incentivised users are always not drawn from the bottom of the quality barrel, as some purists would make out.
If nothing else, these are game players. They will download and play something (or perform an action) to progress in a game they are currently committed to.
Fine print
Of course, there are some caveats.
5th Planet's chief mobile office Rob Carroll used to work at Tapjoy, so he certainly knows how to make the most of the opportunities it provides.
This was the reason that its campaign for Dawn of Dragons only incentivised users who downloaded the game and beat the first boss. This takes about three minutes.
The result were that although incentivised users had lower retention than organic players, they monetised better.
As they say, you pays your money and you makes your choice (having done your ROI calculation, of course).
Chart of the Week
Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
Related Articles
as
Chart of the Week
Aug 18th, 2016
How changing one screen led Games2Win to increase Parking Frenzy 2.0's retention by 5%
Chart of the Week
Jul 22nd, 2016
20% of the 106 million US mobile gamers account for 62% of time spent playing
Top Stories
News
5 hours, 51 minutes ago
Mobile legend Stumble Guys is now on PlayStation 4 and 5 with cross-progression
Feature
10 hours, 42 minutes ago
Matej Lančarič's Squad Busters deep dive: Under the skin of 2024's biggest launch yet
Feature
May 14th, 2024
53 top mobile games in soft launch: Squad Busters, Battle Guys: Royale, Plants vs. Zombies 3, LEGO Hill Climb Adventures, and more
Events
Valencia Indie Summit 2024 | Europe | May 16th |
Mobidictum Meetup Berlin May 2024 | Europe | May 16th |
Digital Dragons | Europe | May 19th |
GamesBeat Summit 2024 | North America | May 20th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Nordic Game Spring 2024 | Nordic | May 21st |
Impact 2024 - Indie Games | May 23rd | |
MomoCon 2024 | North America | May 24th |