Play and win! The next generation of Mobile gaming ads

Mobile ads are fast becoming the next big thing in social media marketing with Google and Apple claiming its share of the pie with Apple’s iAd and Google’s AdMob.  Moving one step up, and to leverage off the boom of mobile gaming and the increase in time spent on these games, advertisers and start-ups are coming up with ways to engage gamers and reward them for playing.

Google’s Admob and Apple’s iAd: the forerunners in Mobile ads

The ‘first’ generation of mobile ad units were static features, appearing as standardized banners at the top or bottom of your mobile screen. Phase 2 saw ads appearing in the middle of mobile games, usually as the user is moving on to the next level of the game or waiting for the page to load.

Version 3.0 sees a more interactive approach to these ads, featuring dynamic hyperlinks that takes users to the advertiser’s website/iTunes App page. Well, the next generation of ads are here with more social incentives. Start-up company Kiip (pronounced as ‘keep’), is revolutionizing mobile gaming apps by rewarding users with ‘real-life’ perks when they complete a level or task on the game. According to TechCrunch, the new advertising model would do away with pop-ups and banner ads that have long polluted the valuable screen space on our mobile devices.

Kiip Mobile Gaming Ad unit

“Achievements are the universal currency for accomplishment and every game in the world has achievements,” 19-year-old Kiip co-founder and CEO Brian Wong tells TechCrunch. “The achievement itself isn’t the cool thing, it’s the moment. We realized that the moment was worth something. The natural evolution is to put something there that actually matches the achievement.”

So what’s next for the mobile advertising industry? It would be interesting to see how these ad units would integrate and connect users to their social networks, enabling you for example, to check-in using foursquare when you’re redeeming your Kiip reward or tweeting about it to your friends all while on the go.

Check out the article about Kiip here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20110411/tc_digitaltrends/kiiprevolutionizingmobilegameadvertisingwithrealliferewards_1