Ad revenue "more difficult" for casual games this year

Advertising revenues for casual games portals are set to decrease in the coming year as a result of economic uncertainty, but that can be offset by offering advertisers better profiling and user targeting.

That's according to Spil Games CEO Peter Driessen, who told GamesIndustry.biz that even if ad revenues would be more difficult to maintain, his company has already seen an increase in its user base in the past few months.

"We've already seen that growth within our portals bigger than last year, so what we're seeing is that there are more people coming to them," he said. "We think that people are spending more time at home online, and less going to fancy restaurants, to the movies, and so on, and they've looking for home entertainment.

"We deliver that for free, so I think the economic situation will help us to grow even faster - that's one part of the answer.

"Of course I do think that getting the advertising revenues will be much more difficult, to keep the same CPMs (costs per million) as they were in the past, but if you can work on the basis of better profiling and better targeting, you can keep them the same.

"And on the affiliate side, people do keep spending little amounts of money, maybe a dollar of credit here and there for a game, or for some items within a game. They don't spend money buying a new car, or expensive items.

"So at this time we don't see any sign that people are spending less with us. Altogether this leads to much faster growth than in the past and combines with a situation that the spending of the consumer will be about the same, with a little bit less from advertising. If I look at our targets this year, we'll meet them - we'll not be affected."

The full interview with Peter Driessen is available now.