Mobile Social Gaming: Emotions Drive Engagement At Critical Moments

Research shows that lev­els of engage­ment while users are gam­ing is strong­ly cor­re­lat­ed with the lev­el of emo­tion they are expe­ri­enc­ing.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

The Media­Brix Social and Mobile Gam­ing Report has revealed that lev­els of engage­ment while users are gam­ing is strong­ly cor­re­lat­ed with the lev­el of emo­tion they are expe­ri­enc­ing.

Fueled by the pop­u­lar­i­ty and preva­lence of smart­phones in the dai­ly lives of con­sumers, mobile gam­ing is a huge, and still grow­ing phe­nom­e­non. Accord­ing to Mobile Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (MMA) data, there are 1.6 bil­lion desk­top and note­book PC gamers, and as many as 700 mil­lion mobile gamers around the world. It rep­re­sents a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty for brand mar­keters to share con­tent that dri­ves engage­ment with con­sumers. The bian­nu­al Media­Brix Social and Mobile Gam­ing Report has ana­lyzed gam­ing data from the first and sec­ond quar­ters of 2014, pin­point­ing key trends and con­sumer behav­ior habits. Aver­ag­ing data from more than 200 social and mobile gam­ing adver­tis­ing cam­paigns, and more than 1 bil­lion impres­sions, the study revealed a com­pelling rela­tion­ship between con­sumer emo­tions and the pro­cliv­i­ty to engage. Terming moments of adver­tis­ing inter­ac­tions as “break through moments” (BTMs), the Media­Brix study found that the more intense the emo­tion, the high­er the adver­tis­ing per­for­mance was for brands.

mediabrix-gaming

Key Statistics

Close­ly con­nect­ed to the gamer’s state of emo­tion and game­play, Media­Brix found that engage­ment rates var­ied depend­ing on the emo­tion itself

  • Encour­age: BTMs had an aver­age engage­ment rate of 17.0 per­cent
  • Reward: BTMs had an aver­age engage­ment rate of 73.6 per­cent
  • Res­cue: BTMs had an aver­age engage­ment rate of 86.9 per­cent

Emotional Targeting

The sug­ges­tion for brand adver­tis­ers uti­liz­ing gam­ing plat­forms, is to con­sid­er emo­tion­al tar­get­ing to reach play­ers as they expe­ri­ence emo­tions induced to key moments in the gam­ing expe­ri­ence. The high­est lev­el of engage­ment takes place at res­cue moments, in a sce­nario for exam­ple, when a play­er is stuck on a lev­el with no more lives and needs assis­tance to progress. A typ­i­cal res­cue BTM may offer play­ers a chance to advance in exchange for watch­ing brand’s mes­sage through an in-game adver­tise­ment. Ari Brandt, CEO and co-founder of Media­Brix gave the fol­low­ing com­ment in the report:

Believe it or not, dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing does­n’t have to dis­rupt or annoy peo­ple. It can be thought­ful and even human­ize brands in users’ eyes. The key is under­stand­ing and acknowl­edg­ing the state of mind of that user, then being respect­ful with your pro­posed inter­ac­tion. Brands reach­ing play­ers dur­ing emo­tion­al moments aligned to res­cue, reward and encour­age can for­ti­fy the user expe­ri­ence. Plus, this puts brands in a posi­tion to make true emo­tion­al con­nec­tions with play­ers, all the while dri­ving the high­est returns and brand per­for­mance met­rics of any dig­i­tal ad for­mats avail­able today.”

Driving Engagement With Immersive Marketing

It’s a les­son that can apply to wider con­tent mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives. With video and inter­ac­tive con­tent, con­tent mar­ket­ing is becom­ing more immer­sive, and brands such as Mon­ey­Su­per­Mar­ket are begin­ning to uti­lize social gam­ing to spear­head cam­paigns. As mar­ket­ing becomes more immer­sive, we may begin to hear an increase in the use of emo­tion­al tar­get­ing to dri­ve user engage­ment, and con­ver­sion rates.

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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