Comscore: Over Half Of Social Gamers Will Accept Ad Offers

Today Comscore announced the results of a survey of social gamers sponsored by Offerpal, revealing that over half of social gamers surveyed (53.3%) are willing to accept ad offers or perform other marketing offers in order to obtain virtual currency. The most popular types of ad offers with respondents were, in order of preference, market research surveys, video ads, crowdsourced tasks, shopping incentives, magazine subscriptions, and movie rental service subscriptions.  

Offerpal announced, along with the survey data, that its total number of users increased 20% after it made the Offerpal Surveys option available to developers. Offerpal also recently rolled out a video ad module, announcing that 75% of the users who accepted these offers had never accepted any other type of ad offer nor made direct payments for virtual goods before. Likewise, 21% of users who participated in the Offerpal Shopping program returned to participate again within one week. 

Gamers between 25 and 34 are the demographic group most likely to accept ad offers, with 70.9% of respondents in this group saying it was "very likely". Only about 22.8% of gamers, by comparison, were both willing and able to purchase virtual goods or currency in social games through direct payment. 

Nearly 30% of gamers lack any way of paying for virtual items directly. A surprisingly high number of respondents from the Comscore panel, about 34.9%, said they were "very unlikely" to ever purchase virtual currency or goods directly under any circumstances. This is consistent with what is known about conversion rates in most social games, which can be as low as 1% to 2% of all active players even in very profitable games. 

Of the users who were likely to purchase virtual goods directly, 53.4% were men and 42.8% were between 25 and 34. Roughly 85.4% of these users willing to pay are also "very likely" to accept ad offers in exchange for virtual currency. This is consistent with what is known about the current target audience for ad offers, which is women around 30 years of age. This demographic group tends to play social games avidly but is less willing than male counterparts to pay for goods directly. 

Roughly 54.5% of respondents said they played social games at least once per day. Roughly 26.7% reported playing several times per week and only 11.% reported playing once per week. The smallest number of respondents, 7.3%, reported playing only two or three times per month. These stats make sense in light of the viral nature of social games. A player who isn't remembering to come back daily is more likely to lose interest than play sporadically. 

The most popular type of social game was virtual world and simulation games, played by 58.4% of respondents. Arcade-style games were played by 40.3% of respondents, RPGs by 33.5%, action games by 29.7%, board games by 26.9%, card games by 25.6%, and word games by 23.4%. It would appear possible to conclude from this data that around 25% of social gamers are willing to play virtually any type of social game. 

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