[ASK] $1 Million in advertising budget for 2 years

[touchten]

hypothetically,

if you guys can put aside all negative thinking, and doubt..
and you have USD 1 Million marketing budget for a good 24 months.
Which means around USD 40K/month (it doesnt have to be divided per month like that, you can divide and allocate as much as you want)

You can put the situation as if:

1. you are an indie and you got the huge funding, and was given the budget
2. you just landed a job in top game company and was handed the budget
3. you are working in the gaming ad industry/promoter/PR company and your client came to you and said, hey I have $1 Million to spend for 24 months..

What would you do?
Assuming that you have around 5-10 IOS/ANDROID game titles built and ready to run..

NOTE: THIS IS FOR MARKETING ONLY, YOU CANNOT ALLOCATE BUDGET TO BUILD APP/GAME, OR INFRASTRUCTURE, JUST FOR PR/ADVERTISING

come on guys this can be a fun exercise..
appreciate your (hypothetical stories, and go wild!)
Let's make this a fun thread!

[mr.Ugly]

1. hire somebody who has a clue about PR
2. obviously you got the wrong job.
3. stop acting like you have a clue about PR and quit your job?

hmm..

[craneballs]

Mr. Ugly is being super ugly, but I'll admit he's got a point

Basically what all the big bastards with massive budgets do is "buy them where they can".

I have somewhat limited practical experience (never worked with this kind of money), yet I understand the basics of mobile game marketing.

Basically, I would secure good reviews if the games' quality allow for that. Not really for attracting gamers, since you're gonna have many users coming from other channels, but to support the notion that "yes this game is truly awesome".

Would use the free game of the day service, Appgratis seems to be the biggest right now (they promise 0.5 mil. downloads worldwide).

Depending on the LTV would just pump steady dollars into premium ad networks: Leadbolt, Fiksu, etc. Or at least non incentivized - Chartboost. Say 5-10k installs a day for US, possibly more, possibly cutting the spent to 6 intensive months.

Than optimize, optimize, optimize. Device targetting, focusing on markets with high spend, etc.

[Startup Culture]

You actually need to add some additional parameters to make this a fair hypothetical, for instance are the games freemium or paid? The monetization model is a critical determinant. All that aside, I would do a combination of performance based marketing, App Discovery sites (Faad, app gratis, etc.), social media marketing. That would be my first salvo. I'd track the ROI (return of investment) on every channel and figure out the LTV (Lifetime Value)of each customer that channel delivered and then double down on the winners and keep testing different channels. There are so many ways to market an app that people aren't using but then again that's a story for a different post.

[Rubicon]

Is "withdraw all the money and piss off to South America" a valid response?