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Friends go viral: Word-of-mouth accounts for 57% of game discovery

Research from video sharers Everyplay

Friends go viral: Word-of-mouth accounts for 57% of game discovery
When it comes to getting your game discovered, the very best assets at your disposal are your players.

Applifier recently completed a survey of 1,800 mobile gamers and discovered that traditional and online word-of-mouth advertising account for 57 percent of new game discovery awareness.

Online awareness includes seeing a Facebook post (24%), watching a trailer for the game on YouTube (18%) and seeing a screenshot shared by a friend (9%).



Top sources for word-of-mouth advertising that influences a gamer's decision to download include:

  • Reading user reviews (43 percent)

  • Hearing from a friend/family member (36 percent)

  • Seeing a friend/family member play the game (25 percent)

  • Seeing a Facebook post by a friend or family member (24 percent)


The survey also identified a highly valuable player segment dubbed 'sharers', who are estimated to comprise 20 percent of the mobile gaming audience.

These sharers are more inclined to dish out gaming reviews and videos through their social gaming habits, and help create an authentic, self-sustaining viral advertising loop.



Better still, sharers are more likely to convert to paying users and pay on average 7 percent more on in-app purchases - which makes them an attractive demographic to court.

Sharers are also 50 percent more interested in playing together, whether with real friends (61 percent for sharers, 44 percent for non-sharers) or with non-friends (40 percent for sharers vs 24 percent for non-sharers).

Of course, this is good news for Applifer, which through its Everyplay gameplay video recording and sharing service - recently intergrated into Bad Piggies - encourages this sort of behaviour. 

Indeed, we caught up with Applifier's CEO Jussi Laakkonen, who explained the survey to us.



And if you're interested in reading Applifier's report in full, you can do so by visiting its blog.

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Representing the former colonies, Matt keeps the Pocket Gamer news feed updated when sleepy Europeans are sleeping. As a frustrated journalist, diehard gamer and recovering MMO addict, this is pretty much his dream job.