Pokemon Go To Add Location Ad Sponsorship In The Ultra-Popular Game
ANALYSIS: Businesses that want to be featured in Pokémon GO will now be able to pay to sponsor the locations used in the game as monetization expands.
As of July 12, the Pokémon Go game app has been downloaded to more than 5.16 percent of all Android phones in the United States, while also engaging the average user for more than 43 minutes per day, according to an earlier eWEEK story.
Those numbers mean that Pokémon Go is already on more Android phones than the Tinder dating app and that it is being used more than well-known apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat and Messenger, according to market intelligence company SimilarWeb.
Nintendo boost
Pokémon Go is a free app that is available for Android and iOS devices.
The game is so popular that Nintendo’s stock jumped as much as 25 percent in Japan following the release of the app, according to a July 10 Bloomberg story.
The soaring popularity of the game has added about $7.5 billion to the market value of the company in the two days after its release, according to a July 11 story by Reuters, even though the mobile game is the creation of Google spin-off Niantic and Pokémon Co. Nintendo owns a third of Pokémon Co., and both have stakes in Niantic, the story continued.
The game allows players to discover and capture Pokémon creatures in their neighborhoods and other locations using the AR apps.
Downloads of the games were in such high demand shortly after the launch that they originally caused server problems for Niantic, according to a July 8 Twitter post by the company.
Nintendo itself recently began releasing some gaming mobile apps for some of its most popular games, according to an earlier eWEEK story. In March, Nintendo released its first mobile gaming app, Miitomo, for iOS and Android devices.
For years, Nintendo resisted bringing its games to small mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, so as not to dilute its gaming console business, but that began to change as the company refocused to seek new ways of retaining and bringing in new customers for its video game titles. Nintendo helped power the video game console industry starting in 1983, when it launched its original Nintendo Entertainment System.
Nintendo has since sold more than 4.3 billion video games and more than 680 million gaming consoles around the world, according to figures that the company provided.
Originally published on eWeek
