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
Apr 27th, 2024
PocketGamer.biz Podcast Week in Views E09 - Supercell's Squad Busters goes global, Embracer Group splits, and Apple's Vision Pro flops
News
Apr 26th, 2024
Week in Views - Squads busted, Apple crushed, War zoned and Snoozin' with the Snorlax…
Feature
Apr 26th, 2024
Speaker Spotlight: Dubai Future Foundation's Faisal Kazim on leading Dubai's gaming charge
Events
Esports Future Summit | Middle East | Apr 27th |
Dubai GameExpo Summit 2024 | Middle East | May 1st |
The MENA Games Industry Awards 2024 | Middle East | May 2nd |
GameDev Atlantic 2024 | May 4th | |
Mobidictum Meetup Berlin May 2024 | Europe | May 7th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Israel Mobile Summit 2024 | Middle East | Jun 6th |
DevGAMM Vilnius 2024 | Europe | Jun 14th |
Popular Stories
News
Apr 23rd, 2024
Supercell’s Squad Busters soft launches today with over 100,000 Google Play downloads
News
Apr 23rd, 2024