• by Inman Breaux , January 3, 2012

Two huge trends have swept the mobile marketplace over the past few years: mobile gaming and location-based social networking. The first game ever created for a mobile phone was "Tetris" in 1994. Nokia launched its famous "Snake" game in 1997 and in 2009, Rovio introduced "Angry Birds." Since then, gaming on mobile devices has grown at a frenetic pace. Between 70% and 80% of all mobile downloads are games, and 72.8 million people in the U.S. will play games on their mobile devices this year.

At the same time, location-based social networking has taken off, with an increased desire for users to share their location with friends and followers. Foursquare, Scvngr, Gowalla, Yelp, Broadcstr -- the list goes on and on. Originally introduced to connect people to businesses close to them, these two trends are beginning to merge.  Developers have now taken location-based gaming to the next level. 

For example, Red Robot's game "Life is Crime" allows users to play virtual scenarios in their real-life settings. TrezrHunt is a real-time location-based game where you control a character by moving yourself outdoors. The character moves as you move, and the goal is to collect treasures.

With these two trends taking the world by storm, advertisers have a unique opportunity to connect with a niche portion of their audience both in an online and physical world. Retailers and businesses have the opportunity to leverage this engaging local data, bringing the digital and the physical world together.

A local retail store, such as Gamestop, can reach a desired gaming user, informing them of a flash sale within 10 feet of their store. Retail stores and small businesses alike are seeing tremendous results from mobile texting, push-notifications and proximity campaigns. It's a great opportunity for brands to connect with their audience in a way they love. While the potential is great, what do brands need to do in order to make sure they capitalize on local, mobile advertising?

First, brands need to find a suitable supply source that can offer access to the most targeted audience possible. This source can be an ad network, DSP, mediation platform, or direct publisher, as long as the demographic can be reached and scaled. Second, how is the brand’s message delivered?  A great message can be correctly targeted but poorly delivered (see standard in-app banner ads) wastes an advertiser's money and a user's precious attention.  More effective delivery methods include interstitials, video, push-notifications and toaster ad units, to name a few.

Third, brands must take into consideration the unique way in which location-based mobile games bring together the physical and digital worlds and plan campaigns that map to this experience. Augmented reality-based games will begin to dominate the mobile gaming space in the coming years. That creates opportunities for advertisers to integrate brands into content.  

This all may seem obvious, but even with first-party data available, brands and agencies need to shift their mindset of choosing advertising’s a la carte plate to effectively combining all. Advertising has always evolved and gone to where people are (more specifically to where their attention is) even if it sometimes lags behind -- from print to TV, TV to online, online to mobile.  

Although it has its challenges, mobile advertising continues to explode, and mobile games are a significant catalyst to this growth. The possibilities that location-based games bring are mean incredible opportunities for advertisers. Early adopters that buy space into these games and formulate experimental campaigns could be the ones that benefit most from this convergence of media.