In Game Affiliate Program$

Here's an idea. Give your game away free and try to make money from 'in game' product placement through existing affiliate programs (like the Amazon Associates program).

In order to get the biggest possible distribution, the game is a free download. When the user exits the game he/she is presented a screen advertising a few potentially interesting products. If the user finds one of the products interesting, he/she can choose to click it. doing this would cause the web browser to open and go to where that product is available for purchase.

I picture it working sort of like this...
A person is interested in lets say cars (just for example). Because of this interest he finds a computer game about racing cars. It is a free download so he he has no reason not to give it a try. He downloads it and plays it. When he is done playing the game a screen appears and says, "Hey, check out this really cool book about 57 Chevy's at Amazon.com". He clicks the link, goes to Amazon and buys the book. You get 10% of the sale... maybe $1.50. (not a lot, but it could add up).

 

i like this idea - maybe you could do some sort of product placement, that when you interact with the product it opens a link in a new window

 

Can Unity do that?

 

Yes....
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=3713&highlight=browser

 

Interesting idea Randy, although after my recent meeting with shockwave.com and based on some of what I've heard elsewhere, advertisers are actually a bit slow on taking to in-game ads. Classic stuff here, it's hard for them to evaluate the return on the investment and some recent studies have shown that users have little to no increase in product awareness after playing games with in-game ads.

That having been said, there is a significant market for branded game experiences (where the whole game is branded for the client, not just parts found within the game). For example, you make a generic car racing game, then you can customize that with artwork for an arbitrary sponsor (billboards, vehicles, etc.). Perhaps you also update it with unique assets, like custom tracks or environments, thus offering the client a game with advertising and something that's not a cookie cutter copy of someone else's sponsored game.

 

Yeah, but my idea is a bit different than that. I was suggesting using various 'affiliate' programs... Amazon Associates is the best one I know of.

This way you don't have to sell anyone on the idea. They aren't paying you for advertising, they are paying you commission on any sales your game generates. I realize that advertising dollars would pay better, but for a small indie developer the Affiliate Program route is quick and easy.

 

Sorry I didn't catch that better the first time. It seems that at that rate you might look for regular click-through revenue in addition to a payment per-sale, right?

 

You may, or may not, do okay this way. Very helpful eh?

Having supported a company of 5 full time and 4 part time folks off of banner ad revenue for 3 years (until the dot bomb) I learned a few things.

1) People who want to be entertained generaly do not want to think about buying things at the same time. Periodically, there was a really good match between ads and our gamer audience, but mostly 'not so much' as they say.

2) One exception is other entertainment ads. But, if people buy/go to the other place, they reduce the time they play on your game. Not so good for a game designed for long term play. But maybe for mini-games it would work

3) For some reason advertisers expect the moon in this business even though they poduce some 'not so great' ads. Ad Agencies will say pretty much anything to get ad sales. Hosts cheat, frequently. So all told its not so easy to geneate real revenue, and takes quite a bit of time once your volume gets up there.

I am thinking that placed adds are not going to be much different. Same advertisers, basially same medium, same audience, same agencies (more or less).