Greystripe and Alten8 partner up

September 8th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | No Comments »

Greystripe hit another deal with their advertisement powered gamejump.com as they signed up with Alten8. Alten8 inserts 38 new games into the catalogue, boosting it to just about 100 mobile games in total to be available to consumers worldwide.

“Our alliance with Alten8 is a great addition to the game collection and is keeping the site fresh and exciting,” said Greystripe CEO Michael Chang “With so many games available, there’s simply no reason for consumers to continue paying to play games on their mobile, when they’ll find a wide variety of titles for all ages at GameJump.com. Since our launch, we’re seeing thousands of new consumers every day just say ‘no’ to paying for games.”

“This alliance will allow us to greatly increase our distribution of the many exciting games we have and increase the number of gamers we can reach worldwide,” said Sara Andrews of Alten8. “This is also an opportunity to provide many of our older titles to a new audience, giving these popular games of the past a new lease on life. We also may bring exclusive games to this distribution format if the model works well for us.”

Greystripe’s Gamejump launched

August 18th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | 4 Comments »

For all you following our coverage of Greystripe’s activities in regards to ad subsidized games, we can finally tell you where to find the games. All free games are available from gamejump.com. Content providers are amongst others HandyGames, Ozura and Mobile Vision.

MauiGames claims first advertgame, but is it

August 15th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | No Comments »

MauiGames has claimed their release of Hawaii Golf Classics is the first game that is fully paid by advertising in their pressrelease. The sponsoring comes from Kaanapali Golf Courses. The system uses the AdCell technology to deliver and track advertisements during the game. It sounds not only similar to the Greystripe system to me, but also there are a lot of advertgames we have seen in the market more early. Some examples are for example from Overloaded who released a game for Red Bull’s flugtag and for Adidas which don’t require any connectivity. Well

The adWRAP experience of HandyGames

August 1st, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | 1 Comment »

Following up on our previous post featuring the deal between Greystripe and HandyGames, we have spoken to HandyGames CEO Christopher Kassulke himself about how the system works.

[Arjan] The Greystripe idea of providing free games to consumers sounds really great, but can you explain where we can expect your ads are to pop-up?

[Christopher] Depending on the game it will pop up. Of course in the beginning of the game and partly also between the game sessions.

[Arjan] So we can conclude the adWRAP itself pauses the game and continues after displaying the ad?

[Christopher] Depending on the game and what we / or the customer want.

[Arjan] Greystripe announces on it’s website that the advertising is latterly wraped around the game. We expect this influences filesize to some extend. How did HandyGames cope with this as Greystripe announces no changing to the games is needed?

[Christopher] Filesizes are not the big issues cause HandyGames always take care about that. For developers with huge filesizes that might be a problem.

[Arjan] Are there plans to also start supporting ad-subsidizing your games on the DoJa platform?

[Christopher] We are currently not planning to use it in DoJa Games. Perhaps that’s changing in the near future.

[Arjan] What everyone of course likes to know, are revenues comparable to the regular purchase systems we know, or is it performance based?

[Christopher] Of course we don’t have any real figures currently. But it is performance based if the game is used more often we are getting more revenues. That’s very good for our kind of games like Townsmen or Spellboys that you play very often.

[Arjan] So this means every game is a connected game as the adWRAP needs to sync it’s data with the adWRAP server. Aren’t you afraid users will get fed up with high bills for data usage?

[Christopher] in several countries the operators don’t charge airtime or airtime is included in the package. Yes there might be some costs for the endcustomers but not significant ones. We are not downloading whole games etc.

[Arjan] Any final words about your experience with adWRAP?

[Christopher] We see adWRAP as good chance to attract new customers and we can generate extra revenues beside the operators. If a customer like the game and play it very often we will also generate significant revenues. So just ask me in half a year if it’s a successful way of offering mobile games.

[Arjan] Thanks for your valuable contribution.

Greystripe and Handygames go ad-subsidized

August 1st, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | No Comments »

Greystripe and HandyGames announced a cooperation to offer games from the HandyGames catalogue for free to consumers. The games will be ad-subsidized using Graystripe’s adWRAP solution for mobile games. By using adWRAP, the games will sync up with the adWRAP servers and collect advertisements which will be shown on the phone. HandyGames will fit 28 games (just about the whole catalogue) with the adWRAP solution. Christopher noted; “We’re excited to introduce a collection of our most popular mobile games to a wider audience and give consumers free access to mobile entertainment. Graystripe has found a revolutionary way for the mobile games industry to move to a new level and help game publishers open up new revenue streams”.

Hands-On to move on mobile advertising as well!?

July 17th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | 1 Comment »

According to Madvertisingblog, Hands-On is the first mobile studio to start dealing in mobile advertisements. Hands-On will utilize it’s network of operators where they serve entertainment products trough their own portals.

More Coca Cola games to hit the market

June 16th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | No Comments »

Advertgaming is getting more and more attractive to game studios. Following the example of Blue Sphere Games and Mobile2Win, also Upstream S.A. delivers three mobile Coca Cola games to the public.

The target audience is the Greek market where consumers can download Coca-Cola 90, which is a newsreader aimed at the current World Cup. Also for sale is the Coca Cola Football Game. A reskin of the Football game released by Touchlink and last but not least is the Coca Cola Football Trivia which tests the consumers knowledge of Football.

All three Coca Cola games are original or reskins of existing games developed by the Touchlink company.

Land Rover launches mobile phone game to promote new Range Rover

August 5th, 2005 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | No Comments »

Ford’s Premier Automotive Group brand Land Rover has launched an electronic game called Range Rover Sport Tourer, available as a download from UK mobile phone networks. Read on … Read on …(2)

Products placed liberally in video games

May 25th, 2005 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | No Comments »

As a member of the Elite Operations Division in the video game "True Crime: Streets of LA," the character Nick Kang must find his way to a truck heist at the flagship Puma sportswear store. Lucky for him, he has a Motorola handset with built-in global positioning system technology.

In the online game Everquest II, players don’t need to leave their fantasy world to satisfy hunger pangs. They can click an icon and have food delivered from the nearest Pizza Hut – within 30 minutes. More …

Advertising in games to reach $562 mln in 2009

May 25th, 2005 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Ad Funded Gaming | No Comments »

Advertisers spent $34 mln in 2004 on in-game ads. But that amount is expected to explode to $562 mln by 2009, according to The Yankee Group. Including advergames (games built solely to promote a product) game advertising will approach $1 bln by the end of the decade. More …