July 9-10, 2013
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Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote a piece on how a consumer-first company like Del Monte can learn from a mobile-first company like Fruit Ninja. Clearly, mobile developers have cracked the code on install-driven metrics around mobile marketing, but the reverse is still true – one needs to look no further than Rovio.

Rovio’s success with Angry Birds, the fastest growing game in history, is a great example of how app developers are applying some ‘traditional’ marketing lessons to drive more revenue. Since Angry Birds flew onto iPhones in 2009, Rovio has leveraged every aspect of the game’s iconic imagery via apparel, accessories, small amusement parks and a soon-to-be released animated series for the big screen. The studio even announced plans to delve into the credit card business with its launch of Angry Birds prepaid debit cards.

So Rovio, once on the brink of bankruptcy, learned from its past failures and acted like a consumer brand, not just a game studio, to reach new heights – with or without a slingshot.

Other game developers have picked up on the clue that in order to become a hit, it pays to think like the agencies on Madison Avenue. Here are three concrete actions to do just that:

1. Pursue a Cross-Screen Approach

Digital media ranges from TV to PC; it’s not limited to your smartphone or tablet. Since many users aren’t tied down to one device, it’s important to realize how they use each one in distinct ways. Someone itching for a cruise vacation may see an ad for a Royal Caribbean cruise package as a banner ad on his iPhone, but the chances of him finalizing the package purchase with this same device are slim.

Google recently released a series of case studies demonstrating the significant lift achieved by brands using a cross screen approach. Delta Airlines achieved a 105% increase in brand awareness and a 103% increase in brand favorability by extending their campaign from TV only to TV plus mobile. Similarly, Volvo observed 74% brand recall for users exposed to multiple screens vs. 50% for TV alone. Both examples point to the importance of targeting audiences and their behavior across all screens.

Successful brands understand this — and are pursuing a multi-screen approach. They use some screens for creating awareness of their product, and others for influencing the user to complete the product purchase or download. Since certain devices elicit certain behaviors, developers must start tailoring their message according to the screen that displays it.

Let’s reference our main mobile example, Fruit Ninja.

The game’s studio, Halfbrick, made marketing a top priority from the get-go, despite not having many resources to do so at the time. Clearly not made for TV, the Fruit Ninja’s web video advertisement, featuring two actors dressed as fruit being chased through a park by another actor dressed as a ninja, quickly went viral on the desktop web. Rather than viewing every screen as an acquisition opportunity, developers should learn how certain screens both complement and contrast each other in order to deliver an effective campaign.

2. Channel Your Inner Nielsen

Ten years ago, it would have been costly and difficult for a developer to target a highly educated, married female scientist who also happens to actively play its game. Traditional brands accomplished this goal using approximations on television audiences provided by Nielsen, the leading global information measurement company. They would further commission brand loyalty studies by firms such as Insight Express and Dynamic Logic to track customer lifetime value to a particular brand. Such studies are expensive and time-consuming, but are the lifeblood of brand management.

Developers, in contrast, have had to work through a tangled web of anonymous Android mobile web cookies, UDIDs, IMEI numbers, SHA-1 hashes and now Apple’s IFAs (“Identifier for Advertisers”), with little specificity about audience or intent.

Finally, there are tools available for developers to leapfrog brands in their use of audience data and insights to find the right users. This is particularly important to any developer who is looking to establish a long-term relationship with its users.

The most obvious examples are commerce (like eBay, Amazon, Groupon), travel (Expedia, Kayak, HotelTonight) and streamed media (Netflix, Hulu, Spotify), where a loyal user may generate $5-$20/month for several years. A high percentage of users, however, download the app, and then do not activate (ie. add a credit card and make a purchase), and in many cases, more than 80% of users neveractivate at all.

Groupon’s financial filings are instructive: from their Q3 2012 earnings report, only around 7.9% of users are active; they are earning $5.33/month from active subscribers vs. $0.38 from all subscribers. Assuming an 18-month lifetime value calculation, their value per average subscriber is $6.78, while their value per active subscriber is $95.94. Clearly, the ability to identify an active user is worth more than an order of magnitude greater to Groupon. Now, marketers are able to not only target audiences, but they can also monitor post install behavior (ie. did users activate or become frequent purchasers?) to inform acquisition strategies. These are tried-and-true methods that brands have employed, and are now in the hands of developers.

The top brands of today would be lost without data, add-ins, insights and analytics to measure brand performance. And that’s how most game developers are today: stuck using unsophisticated tools for targeting rather than taking advantage of the tools at their disposal to build loyal, lifelong relationships with their users. With post-install metrics, developers can build a performance strategy that goes far beyond install.

3. Extend Your Brand Beyond Screens and Into New Products

Apps similar to Fruit Ninja are also beginning to learn from global brands and following the Rovio model.

Fruit Ninja released its game for Kinect on Xbox this past summer (in addition to already being available on iPhone, Android, tablet and PC). The game was already familiar to more than 25 million people who play on mobile phones and tablets, but expansion to Xbox continued to strengthen the product’s recognition by honing in on a specific audience segment: highly active male players aged 12 – 17.

Halfbrick went a step further by reeling in an even younger demographic of players who may not even have access to mobile devices or play consoles yet: in June of this year, Halfbrick rolled out a partnership with several leading international consumer product companies to bring Fruit Ninja toys, apparel, shoes and more to the marketplace.

Similar to Del Monte’s variety of food offerings, Fruit Ninja’s new product partnerships are great steps forward in brand extension. Audiences buy brands, not operating systems and OEM specs. In order for games to become real brands, they must focus on expanding an audience profile, rather than just attracting more mobile consumers.

And there we have it. Cross-screen marketing, granular analytics and brand extensions are just three steps for taking a fun, mobile game and turning it into a household name. Any other ideas are welcome in the comments section of this story below. What else can games learn from brands?

Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan left her position as lead scientist at Google-acquired Admob in 2010 to create and found cross-screen mobile ad network Drawbridge. Named one of Business Insider’s “Most Powerful Women in Mobile Advertising (Meet the Most Powerful Women in Mobile Advertising: 2012),” she is an expert on advertiser-buyer connections in today’s mobile environment. Kamakshi attended Stanford University and received a PhD in Information Theory and Algorithms.

photo credit: blakespot via photopin cc

Both in the U.S and globally, people are accessing the web more frequently and for longer periods, using smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and smart TVs. We’re still using PCs as well, but personal computer usage of social media is just about the only category that’s down: 4 percent fewer Americans connected to the Internet via a PC in 2012, while 82 percent more connected via the mobile web and 85 percent more connected via a mobile app.

Source: Nielsen

Mobile app and mobile web use were both up — way up.

Overall, total time on the Internet in 2012 is up 21 percent to 520 minutes a month. A staggering 17 percent of that is spent on one service: Facebook.

And it’s social networks that are seeing huge growth, with 85.5 million accessing social networks via a smartphone or tablet app in July 2012 versus 44.8 million in July 2011, and 81.1 million using the mobile web in July 2012 compared to 43 million in July 2011. PC use is still the largest, with 171.8 million Americans using a laptop or desktop machine to get social online, but that’s just slightly up from 163.6 million in 2011.

Interestingly, while Facebook’s PC’s audience declined by 4 percent in 2012, Twitter’s grew 13 percent. Google+ grew 80 percent, and Pinterest grew 1,047 percent, but that has a lot more to do with the growth cycles of those two sites than transformative change in how users are accessing them. Facebook’s app audience increased by 88 percent, and its mobile web audience increased by 85 percent, more than offsetting the slight PC decline, and underscoring Facebook’s recent efforts to monetize its mobile services.

Another insight from Nielsen: Pinterest’s growth flattened — and even disappeared in early 2012. It had grown from an audience of perhaps 2.5 million in July 2011 to almost 25 million in February 2012, but it plateaued at that level for three months, and then actually decreased in May before taking off again in June.

Still, Pinterest is a massive force online, especially among women, who make up 70 percent of its web audience, 84 percent of its app users, and 72 percent of its mobile web audience — and spent about 2.1 billion minutes on the site in 2012.

The second-screen phenomenon is on the increase as well, as TV viewers continue to use Twitter as a way to sound off, comment on, and chat with others about what they are watching:

Almost a quarter of 18- to 34-year-olds comment on social media sites about their TV shows while they’re watching, and the numbers are growing through 2012.

That’s a low percentage, globally, with 47 percent of people in Asia-Pacific countries using a second screen while watching TV, and a staggering 63 percent of people in the Middle East and Africa chatting online while watching.

The surveyors talked to 1998 U.S, adults, but the global component of Nielsen’s report surveyed 28,000 people in 51 countries.

The full report is available from Nielsen.

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According to Nielsen’s August 2012 statistics for the U.S., YouTube alone had more than triple the unique visitors of any other site, more than 25 times the number of video streams than its nearest competitor, and more time per viewer than any service other than Netflix.

It’s really not a competition.

This mirrors the results from ComScore’s July 2012 results in some ways, in which Google held a 3-to-1 advantage over nearest competitor Facebook in terms of unique video viewers (156 million to 53 million). But Nielsen’s methodologies and numbers differ from  ComScore’s, and in Nielsen’s numbers for this month, Facebook trails Google unique visitors by almost 6-to-1: 138 million to 25 million.

(VentureBeat has reached out to Nielsen for comment, and we’ll update this story as we get an answer.)

TV is moving online, as we covered recently, especially via game consoles like the Xbox 360, set-top boxes, and smart TVs. Viewers on those platforms watch far more minutes than viewers on phones, PCs, or even tablets, and that’s where both Hulu and especially Netflix see the majority of their minutes.

Other data from Nielsen show that Netflix remains the queen of engagement, with viewers watching an average of 10.5 of Netflix content each month, compared to not quite five hours for YouTube, and 4.5 for Hulu.

One brand that shows consistent viewership between both the Nielsen and ComScore ratings is VEVO, with something like 45 million unique visitors a month to its music videos.

But the most obvious finding?

Anyone who wants to catch YouTube has their work cut out for them.

photo credit: The Matrix Reloaded

Nielsen, the TV ratings expert that also runs the social media measurement service NM Incite, looked at 250 television shows and more than 150 million social media sites to determine the relationship between social media and television.

Based on its data, Nielsen has concluded that there is “a statistically significant relationship” between online buzz and TV ratings throughout a show’s season, with stronger correlations among younger folks and females.

Specifically, if you’re in the 18 to 34 bracket, consider yourself among those whose updates are most likely to contribute to a ratings bump on premiere night. You all are the most active social networkers, according to Nielsen, and so a nine percent increase in buzz volume from your group, four weeks prior to a show’s premiere, will cause a one percent increase in ratings.

But your influence over ratings wears off a bit toward the middle of a season, at which time a 14 percent increase in buzz from your 18 to 34 year-old friends merely creates the same one percent ratings boost.

When it comes to our ability to influence ratings, sex really matters, as usual. “At the genre level, 18 to 34 year-old females showed significant buzz-to-ratings relationships for reality programs (competition and non-competition), comedies and dramas, while men of the same age saw strong correlations for competition realities and dramas,” Nielsen said.

Still, all age groups — even dudes over 50, the least buzzy demo according to the company — turn up the volume on their social chatter (but have less influence) by the time a show’s finale episode airs.

The bottom line is this: Lots of social media chatter from the right audiences equates to better ratings. Of course, this means we can expect even more networks to encourage viewers to tweet, Facebook, G+ and gab about shows all over the web. Bravo is already aggressive (and successful) in its Twitter hashtag promotion tactics.

For comparison, just 43 percent of Netflix viewers watch from PCs, and 36 percent watch from TV-connected video game consoles. Around 15 percent watch Netflix content on Internet-connected TVs and via Roku and TiVo.

In fact, on non-computer devices (excluding TVs that are hooked up to computers), Netflix customers access more content on a wider variety of devices than their counterparts on Hulu.

So what’s locking Hulu’s customers to their computer screens? If you want a short answer, it’s “Follow the money.”

According to Hulu’s wording in that brief boilerplate for its PC-only shows, it’s not Hulu’s fault that you can’t watch Bachelorette Ashely Herbert’s search for love on your Xbox; the buck stops with the networks.

Hulu is aiming for a goal of having all content available on all devices, but licensing is done on a show-by-show basis, and negotiation results can vary.

To understand how licensing screws up your ability to watch The Bachelorette via Roku while you can watch Doctor Who on any Netflix-compatible device in the universe, it helps to start with the differences between Hulu’s and Netflix’s business models.

Free, web-only content nets Hulu a lot of money from advertisers; Netflix’s business model is entirely different and doesn’t reply on web-only licensing.

Hulu’s non-paying viewers can only watch content on the web. Access from other devices is only available if you’re willing to pay for the privilege, and currently, fewer than one million Hulu viewers are.

But even for Hulu Plus subscribers (who pay $8 each month to get more shows on more devices), some of Hulu’s most popular content, including shows like The Bachelor/Bachelorette, Pretty Little Liars and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, isn’t available for viewing on non-PC devices.

As Hulu tells its users in the app, “We currently don’t have the rights to make this show available on TV or mobile devices.” That means no PS3 access, no Roku access — it’s just you, your laptop, Ashley and the bachelors on a lonely Tuesday night, unless you feel like whipping out your HDMI cable and plugging your computer into your TV.

This is where many Hulu Plus subscribers become frustrated. As one wrote in a recent blog comment, “To my dismay, after paying for 10 months, every one of my favorite shows is web-only. What am I paying for?”

The complaint is common enough that Hulu addresses it on its FAQ page, saying, “When we launched the free Hulu.com service, we obtained licensing to stream content directly to the PC and only to the PC. With the launch of the subscription-based Hulu Plus service, we had to start from scratch and acquire licensing to stream content on TVs, smartphones and tablets, as well as PCs… There are still some exceptions that we are working to resolve.”

Netflix, on the other hand, requires a subscription for all content and makes no restrictions about what kinds of devices can be used. So far, its subscriber base is around 25 times larger than Hulu’s. However, it doesn’t get any advertising money from big brands, so offering free content isn’t really a viable option, economically speaking. If Netflix offered free, web-only content, you’d likely be seeing less diversity in the devices used to access the service’s movies and shows.

So, given that Hulu makes money from subscriptions and ads on all Plus content, and given that networks could get more eyeballs for their shows if said shows were available on all devices (and could do so without losing revenue), what’s the hold-up with getting Hulu Plus shows on all supported devices?

In two words: Time and lawyers.

Hulu Plus has only been in existence for eight months, and the company is continually making new deals for distribution on new devices and distribution of new content. Currently, the service offers 2,000 TV series and 1,500 movies with access from around 100 devices. But getting the content licensed for the devices an ongoing process with networks and other content creators.

We wondered whether Hulu’s deals with NBC, ABC and Fox might not be a bit easier to negotiate (since these networks are Hulu’s owners as well as the creators of almost all the most popular TV shows on the service), but Hulu says there’s no distinction between making agreements with these three networks and other partners, which number more than 260 altogether. That makes sense, given that Hulu is getting ready to be sold, and it will need to have licensing agreements in place that are independent of whoever the company’s ultimate corporate parents are.

Why the networks are dragging their feet on a potentially universally beneficial move is anyone’s guess; we’ll be watching out for those renegotiated agreements and how they might affect Hulu Plus’ bottom line.

Image based on photo from williamhook.