• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, March 18, 2014

According to a report from Ari Brandt, and presented by Adotas, over the last two years mobile gaming has emerged as one of the largest forms of media consumption and is not slowing down. eMarketer says gaming continues to dominate as the most popular activity by smartphone owners, and nearly 70% of tablet owners in the U.S. play games on their devices, more than they perform any other activity. By 2015, approximately 162.4 million, or over 50% of the U.S. population, will actively play games on their mobile devices, says the report.mobi

There are a lot of reasons why people play mobile games, says the report. According to a recent YouGov study, users engage with them to relieve stress, fill time while traveling and interact with family and friends. In addition, it’s “portable” and not limited to location, so people can play at home, at work, on vacation, when commuting and virtually everywhere else, making it a seismic shift in behavior, as well as a huge opportunity for marketers.

Mobile gaming is one of the most engaging forms of media consumption, says Brandt. According to Flurry data, U.S. consumers spend an average of 2 hours and 7 minutes per day interacting with smartphones and tablet mobile apps, and spend 32% of that time in gaming apps, or about 41 minutes per day, a significantly longer time when compared to other categories, including social networking, news and entertainment apps. Today, marketing dollars are starting to flow into mobile gaming, making it a critical digital strategy for brands’ overall marketing mix.

In order to utilize this medium to its full potential, marketers need to treat it differently than they do other digital media, says the report.

The mobile gaming ecosystem is drastically different than other forms of digital media, because it offers marketers a way to reach a massive and engaged audience that circumvents issues, such as banner blindness and viewability, prevalent in standard digital advertising. Mobile gaming provides a scalable way for marketers to think beyond interstitials, banners and pre-roll video ads, which users often ignore, resulting in poor performance. Mobile games deliver brands with innovative digital ads today such as units that offer players rewards, value exchange video advertising, rich media creative, and branded content. These ads are 100% viewable, achieve 100%share of voice and appear in a high-quality environment in front of truly engaged users.

Marketers should recognize that users will run the emotional gamut and may feel elation or frustration or everything in between, sometimes all in the same session, when playing mobile games, says the report. Emotional targeting in mobile games elicits positive responses and increases brand engagement based on a player’s emotional state, hierarchy of needs and current activity.

Unlike other forms of digital advertising, mobile games offer brands the chance to reward, encourage and rescue players in a way that is additive to the user experience. For example, with break through moments, brands can reach game players during moments of “achievement,” allowing brands to be the “hero” as they reward players. Once a reward is redeemed, people will reciprocate and further engage with the brand. The entire experience is “in-unit.”

Mobile gaming advertising delivers brand-specific metrics, including lift, interaction, time spent, video completion and engagement rates, that provide the data and proof that these ads engage players. These gaming metrics, data and analytics help marketers quantify and qualify how they will achieve their branding objectives.Mobile gaming ad campaigns can garner performance rates that exceed industry averages by 30x or higher, concludes the report.

For additional information from Adotas, please visit here.