Mobile Game Publishers are Spending More on Advertisements than Console Publishers

If you watch television recently and you’re a gamer, you’ve probably noticed an influx of these crazy big-budget commercials for mobile games. It seems that this is no coincidence, as a report from iSpot.tv (via Gamasutra) shows 2015 is the year mobile game publishers have overtaken console publishers in advertising spending.

Featured above, you can view a commercial for Machine Zone’s Game of War, and while it’s clearly of staggering production quality, it also made it into this year’s Superbowl. According to advertising tracking firm iSpot.tv, companies like Machine Zone, Supercell and King are looking to take advantage of advertisements like this, as they don’t have the reputation traditional game studios have.

“These spending patterns may merely indicate that mobile games are taking advantage of the relative lull in major game console advertising,” said Sean Muller, CEO of iSpot.tv, in an op-ed on Venture Beat. “But so long as this TV ad push results in more app downloads, we may likely be seeing a new long-term competitor to the mix.”


Roughly 30% of the overall TV advertising revenue spent during the first quarter of this year was brought in by King, Machine Zone and Supercell, which also includes roughly $130 million spent thus far in 2015. Traditional game publishers are spending nowhere near as much, and this might be a sign of things to come.

How do you guys feel about this – do advertisements influence your gaming habits at all? Does the production quality and timing of a game advertisement change your response to it? Sound off in the comments below!

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