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Gameloft taps Bango for payments and tracking

Mobile game developer Gameloft didn't want to play the odds with its mobile commerce efforts, so it turned to Bango.

The company is using mobile Web technology provider Bango's Target package and global WAP billing platform to collect payments from customers who buy mobile games such as "Prince of Persia Classic," "Dogz," "American Gangster: The Mobile Game" and "CSI: Miami."

"Gameloft wanted to sell games directly to consumers, mainly targeting the off-portal market," said Sarah Keefe, vice president of marketing for Bango, Cambridge, England. "They first needed to find ways to drive traffic to their mobile storefront and they needed to collect payments."

Consumers can browse and buy mobile games on the site at www.gameloft.com and use the Bango service for payment. The payment method is suggested to the consumer by Bango's BillRank technology and depends on where users are and which network they use.

The Bango system presents payment methods such as direct operator billing, premium SMS, credit and debit cards and PayPal. It adapts to each user based on payment history. For example, if a user pays by credit card, this option is suggested first.

Gameloft's mobile site is custom made for each specific market, meaning the content is in the right language and is relevant for that country. And, with Bango's help, Gameloft knows where the user comes from and presents the best possible payment alternative for the user in that country.

"We needed to be able to track the success of our campaigns, otherwise we wouldn't know where to put our next investment," said Houssain Elguertit, business-to-consumer development manager at Gameloft, New York.

"With Bango tracking numbers, we can track the success of each campaign and see immediately which promotions yielded high rates of return with our 24/7 view of transactions as they happen," he said.

Once Gameloft developed a new revenue stream from the sales of games outside of the carrier portal, it needed a way to capture people's interest for mobile games when they are searching on their phone.

Gameloft bought words such as "mobile games" and saw that its return on investment was getting higher.

"They realized they had to make it easy for people to find them," Ms. Keefe said, "They used other marketing channels besides search, such as AdMob, Third Screen Media. The reason for the range of marketing channels is they can monitor the results and see which [mediums] give them the best results."

Overall, Gameloft's marketing initiatives have driven traffic to the site with visitors from Europe, the United States and the Far East.

"We are very happy to have signed this partnership with Bango," Mr. Elguertit said. "We're witnessing a big evolution today in terms of WAP usage and Bango is a good partner to work with for WAP billing."