With each passing day, the Pokemon Go fad seems to be on the rise and the game’s developer Niantic CEO John Hanke in a recent interview with Business Insider has revealed that new features along with bi-weekly updates were coming to the augmented reality app. But it has come to light that not only the new updates but Pokemon Go will be home to advertisements as well.
The app has been steer clear of ads up until now, however, it will soon be seen within the app in the form of sponsored locations. Pokemon Go will offer retailers and other companies the option to sponsor locations, and advertisers would pay Niantic based on the number of visits they receive as a result of the game.
This is something that is not new for Niantic which had similar sponsorship deals with retailers like Duane Reade, Jamba Juice, and Zipcar for its other augmented reality game Ingress. Just at the initial day of release, Nintendo’s share price increased by 10 per cent, adding a value worth $7.5 billion to market value of Nintendo.
Pokemon Go’s advertising platform will allow partners to pay in order to have Pokemon appear in a specific location. Several analysts have seen this as a significant move by Niantic and Nintendo to rake in money through paid advertising and paid deals to encourage players to come to a particular place, for example a mall and a restaurant where players could spend time and catch Pokemons.
It’s actually a brilliant way to further monetise the game, and it doesn’t necessarily interfere with the user experience at all. Pokemon Go makes the bulk of its revenue by selling virtual goods as in-app purchases, but a sponsored location program could add a huge second revenue stream if the app manages to maintain its popularity.
Launched last week in the USA, Australia and New Zealand markets, the game is all set to soon debut in the Asian and European markets starting with Germany and UK. Hanke has said the company is doing all it can to stabilise the servers before the global rollout. Pokemon Go within just 24 hours of its launch became one of the most popular games and is on track to soon become bigger than photo sharing app Snapchat, possibly in the next couple of days having an active user base of 21 million in the USA alone and having a daily time spent of more than 30 minutes, thus overtaking Facebook’s 22 minutes.
SurveyMonkey Intelligence firm which reports on the mobile industry has released a report which says that the game is the biggest mobile game in the history of USA. But according to the data provided by the company, the game has a long way to go before it comes to the time spent in the game by the users. The 30 minute mark for Pokemon Go is far less than strategy game Game of War which is nearly 2 hours of total daily usage for the average user, while Candy Crush Saga, sees daily usage of about 43 minutes.
All said and done, there is the question of how sustainable is the game in the long run? The first game from Nintendo’s stable Miitomo was topping the Apple charts when it debuted on the app store but has since vanished in thin air. Pokemon Go has the prominent brand ‘Pokemon’ attached to it and a huge number of users who are already the fan of the franchise, making it easy for such large scale recognisability. However, issues have already started cropping for the players in the sense that top players are dominating the gyms making it difficult for casual players to advance and enjoy the entire mechanics of the game. The balance of the game between hardcore vs casual gamers has gone for a toss. But Hanke has said that soon one-on-one battles and trading of Pokemons will settle the issue.