Social Gamers: 53 Percent Prefer Marketing Offers To Paying For Points or Virtual Currency
By Anna Johnson on March 15th, 2010Research by comScore indicates that social network gamers are happy to embrace marketing offers in order to earn points or other forms of virtual currency, rather than pay for virtual currency with cold, hard cash.
According to the comScore survey of 799 comScore panelists conducted in early February 2010, 53.3 percent of social gamers are “very likely” to complete a marketing action such as filling out a survey, watching a video, shopping at online retailers, or signing up for a subscription in order to get points for the games they play on leading social networks.
By comparison, only 22.8 percent of the respondents are willing to buy points using cash payment methods such as credit cards, PayPal, bank transfers or mobile billing.
Meanwhile, 29.7 percent of social gamers say they lack the ability or means to pay for virtual currency with cash options, and among those who do have the ability and means, 34.9 percent say they are “very unlikely” to part with their money in order to purchase points.
When asked which ‘indirect payment methods’ they’d prefer in order to earn points, the most preferred marketing actions were, in order:
- Completing a free survey
- Watching a video
- Completing tasks such as tagging a photo or proofreading a document
- Shopping for clothes or other goods online
- Subscribing to a magazine, and
- Subscribing to a movie rental program.
