Once you search for something, you’ll see endless ads for it. Many of you may have had this experience.
In order to efficiently reach potential customers, advertising systems on the Internet display advertisements for cars to people who seem to like cars, and advertisements for games to people who seem to like games. In order to do this, they decide which advertisements to show by referring to the user’s search history and other information.
This has a positive side: it is more efficient for the advertiser, and it reduces the chance of the person receiving the ad being shown irrelevant advertisements.
For example, there are cases where a high school student is shown advertisements for cars or credit cards, or someone who is married is shown advertisements for matchmaking.
On the other hand, there are concerns, such as the possibility that analyzing user behavior and hobbies may pose problems from a privacy perspective, even though individuals are not identified.
Especially when it comes to smartphones, the device almost always belongs to an individual, and the apps, search keywords, and location information on the smartphone can be interpreted as an individual’s hobbies, preferences, and daily life. There may be ethical problems in acquiring such information for use in advertising.
This is true, but it is also a fundamental element of Internet advertising. If this tracking and targeting function were to disappear, the commercial value of advertisements distributed within smartphone apps, for example, would be greatly reduced.
Despite these concerns, the world is moving towards respecting privacy and the rights of individuals associated with it, and it has become standard to obtain user permission for tracking in the distribution of smartphone advertisements. This has been established as an app store rule by platformers Google and Apple.
Recently, when I installed a new app on my smartphone and started it up, a pop-up message saying “Do you want to allow me to be tracked to display ads?” started to appear, and this is why. It’s from.
As a result, more than 80% of users seem to refuse tracking.
As expected, the accuracy of ads delivered within the app has decreased significantly, and advertisers are now seeing less results than before even though they spend more money.
App games have a system where you can receive items by watching advertisements, but the advertisements that appear in those games are also affected by the same effect, which means that for game developers, advertising revenue has decreased significantly. .
The impact of this is quite serious, meaning that trying to attract users through advertising won’t work as well as before, and even if you introduce advertising into the game you won’t make as much money as before.
The profitability of casual and hyper-casual games that rely on advertising to attract customers and monetize has decreased dramatically.
It has now become a standard method to implement billing even in hyper-casual games, and the method of “earning revenue by showing advertisements appropriately” no longer works.
When that happens, revenue will shift towards payments, so app games that are successful in terms of profitability will generate revenue primarily through payments rather than advertising. For advertisers, this means that quality games are less ad-focused, which could lead to further weakening of in-app advertising
The world of games, apps, smartphones, and ad networks is changing rapidly, and there are many examples where methods that were mainstream a few years ago no longer work at all. Do not track in this advertisement can be considered one of them.
Personally, I think it’s basically a good thing that ads are optimized here. An efficient advertising system will eliminate unnecessary ads, reduce the frequency of ads, and reduce the frequency with which they interfere with content. This means advertisers can achieve their goals faster and game developers can earn more.
On top of that, those who did not want to be tracked were able to refuse tracking by “opting out,” but now they can do the opposite and allow tracking.
It would be a problem if you couldn’t opt out, but my feeling is that there wasn’t a big problem in the previous situation.
However, as a business, it is natural that we need to follow global trends in ethics, and this cannot be helped. There is also the fact that more than 80% of people have actually refused, and it is unlikely that this part will return to normal in the future.
When I listen to the stories of ad distributors for smartphones, it seems that they are all in a very difficult situation. However, some business operators are still showing signs of administrative concern, because advertising is a market that directly moves huge amounts of money, and internet advertising allows for the exploration of various possibilities through ingenuity and technology. I think it’s because I can.
Lately, it feels like games are gradually shifting away from smartphones to Steam and the console game market.
However, the smartphone market is still large and has great potential.
I believe that the nature of platforms, methods of acquiring users, and methods of monetization will continue to change due to various social changes, but as long as the game itself has appeal as content, users can use methods that suit the times. will be able to entertain you.
The Internet advertising world is currently in a transition period, but I think it will regain its calm and have a good relationship with games.
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