Reliance is like the SONY of India – doing major deals in the U.S. ranging from hunting for U.S. startups to striking deals with Dreamworks. They have over 100 million customers and touch 1 in 10 Indians every day.

Zapak.com, one of Reliance’s ADA companies and India’s largest PC gaming site, has connected with U.S.-based, Greystripe, to add 900+ mobile games and applications to their mobile offering, essentially offering the App Store experience, except all of the games are free and ad-supported.

With everyone from Apple to Google to Microsoft launching their own versions of game and application storefronts for cell phones in the U.S., Greystripe is one of the first companies to provide a solution similar to an app store in India.

As proven through the popularity of Apple’s App Store, mobile games and applications are a critical category for media companies looking to get into the mobile market.

What’s interesting here?

• India’s biggest media company is looking to seize on an App Store-like experience for the 5.1 million registered game players on Zapak
• Media companies, including NBC and now Reliance, are all want their own versions of branded app store like distribution – and they’re partnering with established content providers and networks such as Greystripe
• Look for this trend to continue across the industry with other media giants

On Friday Greystripe released a  quarterly update on mobile gaming consumer metrics for advertisers. With the addition of the iphone to the market, the user demographic for mobile games is changing.

The data is based on observed behaviour on the U.S. Greystripe network from July 1st through September 30th, 2008.

Greystripe’s iPhone games are the most popular among the sought-after 18 to 34- year old age group, with 48% of users falling into that category.

Here are some other highlights:

• The 18 to 34-year old demographic is well-educated and affluent, with 80% having attended college and 46% making more than $78K a year
• 75% of iPhone game players access the mobile Web at least once a day, while 66% use it more than once a day
• 87% of game players on both feature phones and the iPhone are involved in the purchasing decisions in their families, with 73% of these respondents using the mobile Web at least once per day
• With over 100 million downloads of their mobile games, Greystripe is seeing a worldwide 9.1% click-through rate on their advertisements

You can see the Report in its entirety here:

Earlier this year I made 10 predictions for mobile – and many of them have already come true! Check out the original post here. 

As part of their mobile insert this month, Strategy Magazine asked if I could provide 10 new sets of predictions… so here they are 10 predictions for the Canadian Mobile marketing ecosystem over the next 12 months as printed in this month’s issue:  

1. Fixed Bluetooth networks will appear all over the country – giving marketers and advertisers proximity marketing abilities as seen in the UK and South Africa
2. One carrier will start the 2d bar code craze by introducing a line of devices that come with a decoder pre-installed. Scanning heads of lettuce for nutritional information will become common-place shortly after (as they already are in Japan)
3. The Mobile web will become more important for marketers as a channel than SMS as devices such as the iphone and the blackberry bold (and rumoured thunder) will raise the bar in terms of overall experience with a high speed mobile web experience on our national 3G network
4. Mobile widgets and applications become bigger drivers for consumer behaviour than the device itself. It will no longer be just about the hardware
5. Palm will make a comeback and once again compete in the “smartphone” space
6. Thanks to built-in GPS in many devices, Location based services (LBS) mashups will make your mobile device more personal and relevant. Marketers will be shortly behind
7. A new Social Networking utility goes totally mobile (with LBS) – and competes with facebook for Canadian mindshare
8. Mobile gaming will explode in popularity – leading to strong growth in mobile advertising
9. At least one new GSM national Carrier will enter the marketplace and will compete directly with Rogers. They’ll probably sell the iphone too. Look for either Bell or Telus (or both) to signal a move into supporting GSM in Canada as well
10. Over 30 billion SMS messages will be sent in Canada – up from the predicted 18 billion this year

I received an advance copy of a report being released today by Greystripe which has some interesting statistics for those of you interested in advertising on mobile gaming platforms.

The data is fresh – based on research from Feb 15 through May 15, 2008.

Here are 5 arbitrary highlights:

1. Average worldwide clickthrough rate for ads on the Greystripe mobile ad network is a remarkable 10.1%. This is around 6 times higher than average mobile banner ad programs
2. 47% of mobile gamers are between the age of 18-24. That number jumps to 75% when you look at 18-34
3. Men and women are pretty equally split in terms of usage (60/40)
4. 51% of gamers are the primary purchase decision makers in the household (although no word on whether living in your parents basement counts as a separate household or not)
5. Favorite types of mobile games (in order): Puzzles, Action, Arcade, Adventure, Mobile-Pets

Although no Canadian specific stats were made available in the detailed report, I’ve asked if any can be made available to be posted on this blog.

Marketers looking to reach the coveted 18-34 demographic should consider a test campaign using the mobile gaming channel.  With exponential growth in the console gaming advertising market over the last few years, mobile is a natural extension of that market.  

Greystripe is a leading ad-supported content distributor with over 65 million mobile game downloads to date. 

Click here to see my previous post on them from CTIA with a video demo of their product.

You can also request the full report by emailing insights @ greystripe dot com.

Last week at CTIA Wireless I had a chance to sit down with Michael Chang, the CEO of Greystripe to talk about mobile gaming and more specifically about his mobile advertising platform.

Greystripe currently has over 800 java based mobile games which are distributed through their own site (gamejump.com) and about 100 other sites and partners.

What makes them unique is the fact that any person with a java-enabled mobile device can download their games for free as Greystripe’s gaming network is ad-supported.

Users downloading games must view 2 pre-game ads and two post-game ads in order to access their games.

Mobile Ads have not been a barrier to engagement

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