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[bolosaur]

Hello,

I've been thinking about whether banner ads might be a good channel for advertising indie games, but I don't really have any experience with this in the field of gaming. Most game-related banner ads that I see seem to promote web-based city builders, so I'm curious as to what effect promoting one's indie game through ads would have.

My biggest concerns would be the following:
1) No effect/poor results.
2) Wrong target audience.

#1 is quite self-explanatory, but as for #2, I guess what I'm curious about is whether this would attract people who are genuinely interested in the game, or if the customers would largely consist of bored stay-at-home parents and Zynga players.

I did some advertising on Facebook to promote the Facebook page of my upcoming project, and despite my best efforts to narrow down the target demographic to one I think would most enjoy my game, the majority of my page likes came from irrelevant users.

Does anyone have any experience with this, and if so, what were your learnings? Any recommendations?

[Muz]

I click on them if they're good. I don't click on them if they're irrelevant to the site I'm visiting. If you put a banner ad about a city building game on something like SimCity Social, I'm sure you'll get really good response. If you put it on an action game or 4chan, you probably won't get any response.

Too much context to really say.

[bolosaur]

So you're the reason why banners exist...

Jokes aside, I'm wondering if perhaps indie gamers are too computer-literate to even bother clicking on ads. My concern is that an irrelevant, more casual/mainstream userbase might congregate around your game if you decide to advertise through banners.

Of course, if getting a good turnover is all you care about then yeah it doesn't matter, but part of me wants to generate a relevant target audience of gamers. Perhaps that's just a pipedream though.

[hanako]

I'm wondering if perhaps indie gamers are too computer-literate to even bother clicking on ads. My concern is that an irrelevant, more casual/mainstream userbase might congregate around your game if you decide to advertise through banners.

Heaven forbid that people who actually buy games cluster around your game!

Worrying that you won't be able to attract the sort of people who are into your game through banner ads can be a valid complaint if you're targeting a certain kind of geek. However, 'indie gamers' are not limited to people who built their own linux distribution. There are many people who play games, including indie games, who are not necessarily all that computer-savvy and don't have all the ads disabled. It can be the users who leave themselves vulnerable to marketing who are the easiest ones to sell to - but not always, it really depends on your game.

Don't ask for rules, here, run your own tests. Do some advertising in different ways. See what results you turn up. Do you get engaged customers, or visitors who look briefly and pass on by to the next shiny thing? Your results are not going to be the same as mine or anyone else's because your game is not the same as mine.

Are you worrying that the "wrong people" might actually play and enjoy your game, or that they might be put off by your game because it's too hard and badmouth it around the internet, or what? You can always tune your advertising to try and make it more clear what you're offering.

[bolosaur]

Well, I noticed when launching on Steam Greenlight that most people seemed to miss our attempt at providing a niched type of game, so I guess my biggest concern would be unintentionally building a userbase largely consisting of Zynga gamers which we'd later have to struggle in communicating with, and where our efforts would go unnoticed by our own users.

But then again maybe this is something unavoidable that all developers have to deal with to some degree, and I do agree that testing is probably the best way, but still, it'd be interesting to learn what others have found out when experimenting with banner ads.

[Karstein]

I'm wondering if perhaps indie gamers are too computer-literate to even bother clicking on ads. My concern is that an irrelevant, more casual/mainstream userbase might congregate around your game if you decide to advertise through banners.

I think you're on to something here. Most gamers who like indie games are very technical people, and have learned over the years that clicking ads are ultimately bad.

[hanako]

Most gamers who like indie games are very technical people, and have learned over the years that clicking ads are ultimately bad.

Do you have any evidence for this belief, or are you basing it on the fact that most indie developers you know are very technical people?

Depending on your particular game it may or may not be correct, but there's a pretty huge range of different kinds of games made by indie developers, often reaching entire different target markets.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i once had a banner ad on a popular tower defense flash game site (gemcraft) for immortal defense. it worked rather well (got tons of clicks) but i'm not sure it was worth the price (which was something like $100 a month). so i do think they can work, but unless you carefully track it (like i didn't) you have no idea if it's worth the price or not

[Karstein]

Do you have any evidence for this belief, or are you basing it on the fact that most indie developers you know are very technical people?

It's just what i think, not a fact My train of thought was that most cpm ads are targeted on another userbase than he is targeting, who are more prone to clicking ads (facebook ads, google ads). 

How about putting up some test ads in different environments just to get some metrics? I'm no expert, but some data never hurts.

[chainedchaos31]

We're about to run some on a new website devoted to Indie Games (Pixels for Breakfast, if anyone is curious). I won't get click through stats, but if I notice a significant sales increase then I'll let you all know!

Seriously, it is so beneficial to make friends with journalists, especially new ones! We provide interesting content, and they provide us with exposure. We're often so grateful for one another's presence that we'll do favours for one another (in this case, the banners). I highly recommend going out there to help out those newer journos!/soapbox

[Muz]

I'm wondering if perhaps indie gamers are too computer-literate to even bother clicking on ads. My concern is that an irrelevant, more casual/mainstream userbase might congregate around your game if you decide to advertise through banners.

I think you're on to something here. Most gamers who like indie games are very technical people, and have learned over the years that clicking ads are ultimately bad.

Most of those people have adblock installed. But personally, I do like a nice ad with a good sense of humor (e.g. Plants vs Zombies). And I've learned not to click on those YOU HAVE WON A FREE IPHONE CLICK HERE NOW!!!! kind of banners.

If you have nice graphics and a decent selling line, banners can work as fine as any other. Just put them in relevant places. And don't overdo it, diminishing returns and all.