Advertising with Touch Arcade

Discussion in 'Site Feedback and News' started by csddavies, Apr 8, 2013.

  1. csddavies

    csddavies Well-Known Member

    Nov 20, 2009
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    Westerville, OH
    I wondered if you guys could site any success stories of people advertising with you?

    Most of the advertising I see/hear on your site/podcast are for games I never see make it in the app store, and if they do, it's because they were already popular before marketing with you and they are just throwing more money around.

    Just curious. Do you kind of feel guilty taking a poor desperate indie's money when you know it's not gonna even give them a blip on their radar? Their choice granted...
     
  2. Eli

    Eli ᕕ┌◕ᗜ◕┐ᕗ
    Staff Member Patreon Silver Patreon Gold

    Funny you bring this up, as there's been a bit of debate recently on Twitter regarding the value of mobile PR which follows in line pretty closely with the value of advertising a mobile game. At the end of the day, with both things, you're buying awareness in the mind of consumers, not direct sales or downloads. Awareness is a hard metric to track, as it's not really something you can give an absolute value to in order to track your return on investment in some massive accounting spreadsheet.

    The mobile PR example is a bit easier to wrap your head around. Say you're a game developer, and you decide to take on a PR agency. They get your game in the hands of people from all the top sites. Of those people, maybe some just didn't like the game and they don't post about it. Others might post about it, but then it's also entirely possible that those stories themselves might just not get any traction.

    In that situation, the PR outfit totally did their job. However, many developers look at things like that as "Well I spent $1,000 on PR, and didn't see a $1,000 increase in sales so the campaign was a failure and the agency is terrible." Advertising is really similar. When people run ads with us, they have the same reach as everyone else, which will substantially raise awareness of their game(s).

    Whether that awareness translates to sales is something we have no control over, as what does and doesn't do well on the App Store often makes very little sense. If you've spent any time following the scene, you've likely seen tons of great games that go nowhere, some that do, and maybe even some downright terrible games that stay glued to the charts forever.

    Advertising, PR, community building, social media interaction, and a billion other things all play into that.
     
  3. csddavies

    csddavies Well-Known Member

    Nov 20, 2009
    328
    1
    0
    Westerville, OH
    Thanks Eli.

    That addresses some of my concerns. Yes, you may not get a 1-to-1 payback on your investment, but I guess there's always the possibility of reaching the right person who give you the right shout-out on Twitter. I've done minimal advertising, because when I have I haven't seen a blip. I've also tried cross-promoting within my apps without much success. Of course the people I can cross promote with aren't on the charts either. I've tried integrations with PlayHaven as well and after a year of seeing no benefit pulled it back out.

    So thanks for the insight!
     

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