Investors taking a bold move on mobile gaming

For the past several months, investors around the world have been leery of mobile gaming and mobile ventures of all kinds. Many mobile-centric companies have been unable to deliver on their ambitious promises, which has translated into significant losses for several investors. These failures have done little to bolster the confidence investors have in the mobile space, but some of these investors are beginning to show a change of heart. Several parties have begun focusing on the battered mobile gaming and social gaming companies that saw turbulence throughout 2012.

Zynga continues to produce despite fall from grace

Zynga, the former champion of social mobile gaming, fell from grace in 2012.The company’s focus on creating addicting social games that borrowed heavily — at times too heavily — from other popular titles in the game industry eventually lost the favor of consumers. As people began to criticize Zynga, Facebook began to pull back its support of the developer. An exodus of investors had added insult to injury to the former gaming titan, but the developer continued its work.

Investors throw lifeline to Zynga and Glu Mobile

Zynga’s tenacity seems to be attracting the attention of new investors. Shares in the company have risen by 12.5% on Monday, the heaviest day of trading the developer has seen since November. This may be due to the developer’s rekindled focus on producing unique games of high quality for mobile consumers. Zynga is not the only developer that is seeing renewed investor interest. Glu Mobile, a developer that had been seeing trouble akin to that of Zynga, saw its shares spike by 16.5% on Monday.

Mobile gaming continues to be attractive market

Despite the problems some companies have been facing, mobile gaming is still considered a very powerful and lucrative market. Investors, though cautious, have shown that they are willing to take risks on developers that had proven their ability to establish a strong presence in this market in the past. If investor support for Zynga and Glu Mobile continues to grow, the two companies may soon find themselves back on top of the proverbial totem pole of mobile gaming.

Companies are seeing the technology as an opportunity to communicate more effectively with consumers.

Smartphone shoppers not only provide businesses with revenue through sales, but through geolocation techniques, they are also giving companies important data about where they are at various times of the day and on different days of the week.

This data is being used to help improve the relevancy of the way that businesses communicate with consumers.

By using the information collected through geolocation, they are able to provide far more personalized and relevant information so that the communication between brands and consumers can considerably improve. For instance, when someone checks into a coffee shop on a regular basis in the morning, that data can be collected in order to identify this pattern so that the individual can then be sent a coupon at that time and for that business.

This type of geolocation technique could make a notable impact on mobile marketing effectiveness.

In this way, geolocation can not only help businesses to reach consumers at the times that are most relevant with an offer that they will find most appealing, in order to encourage more spending at the store, but it can benefit the consumer, as well. It means that the advertising and promotions that he or she receives will more closely reflect what is actually wanted.

That said, it is vital that geolocation technology be treated very carefully. There is a thin line between collecting data so that relevant mobile marketing can be produced, and simply inundating a consumer with ads based on everything that he or she has ever done. The chief revenue officer at Foursquare, Steve Rosenblatt, explained that “Relevance and content is what it all boils down to.”

Foursquare is a highly popular geolocation company that experiences approximately five million mobile check-ins every day. Rosenblatt stated that “The more you check in, the more data [we have] and the more relevant information we can send.” The more consumers take part in this type of activity, the better brands will be able to understand what they want so that mobile marketing can be personalized in a highly accurate way.