As an iOS and Android game developer, if I have multiple titles in my portfolio, and I have a need to cross-promote these other products within the in-game experience — what’s the best way of doing that? The developers of Bee7 definitely think they have an elegant answer to this question, and its tools are now available for the Cocos2D-X mobile game development engine (iOS and Android).
The Cocos2D-X game engine is especially popular among developers in China, with 490,000 developers world-wide working with the tool set. The Bee7 tool is now available for Cocos2D-X users, as well as iOS, and Android developers.
The Bee7 feature will enable developers to create a cross-product promotional campaign, which will launch a promotional video of another title within the game when the player is taking a break. The user can then earn in-game rewards if they watch the entire ad. The value of the awards goes up if they decide to install and play the advertised game.
Although there are a bunch of advertising solutions and plug-ins for a variety of engines, I haven’t personally seen anyone approaching the problem this way. It’s a cool idea in theory. Players don’t have to necessarily break away from the experience they’re enjoying, and this provides a value incentive on the player’s end for watching the entire ad, as opposed to the traditional model where the value for watching an advertisement flowed primarily to those behind the curtain. On paper, everyone in the process can make out with something of value.
And it seems to be working. In China, Bee7 has delivered game developers a product-install rate increase of 179 percent in the last six months.
“Our SDKBOX toolkit is designed to make it simple and painless for the 490,000 developers world wide who rely on Cocos2D-X to be armed with solution that help make games thrive,” said Khai Zhao, the general manager of Chukong USA (developer of Cocos2D-X). “With Bee7 in our suite of tools, we’re offering our developers a chance to solve the commonly faced headache of high user drop-off rates.”