GoD Q&A: AdME's Payne-Taylor On Musical, Ad-Driven Mobile

AdME, the "Advertising-driven Mobile Entertainment" company, has just launched its Guitar Hero-esque mobile title GuitarStar, and in the latest interview for Games On Deck, marketing director Christopher Payne-Taylor details the company's plans for the title as a platform for emerging bands and established brands. But why did AdME decide to entire the already crowded mobile market? As Christopher tells it, the move was a natural progression given AdME's roots in technology development: “We actually started as a technology developer with audio synthesis and "beat matching" technologies that now underlie all AdME mobile products. Early on, we built a few gaming applications just to demonstrate these technologies. But after some test marketing, it appeared they were good enough to be sold as "games" in their own right, so we did some core branding and marketing work ... et voila! We had GuitarStar and another dance-oriented product called DanceLord, which functions somewhat like a mobile Dance Dance Revolution. But the real breakthrough came when we realized these were both not just mobile games in and of themselves, but platforms capable of serving as a whole new kind of promotional platform in the emerging mobile space. There are two kinds of advertising related mobile content. One is advertising solution, where a banner or other type of ad is served from within a mobile app. The other is a branded solution, where the artist or brand is completely "wrapped," meaning that the brand "owns" the application. We chose to cast our lot with the latter because of awareness that, in the advertising industry, there are two concepts beginning to take precedence over all else: branding and engagement. The first "advertising" solution is limited on both counts. AdME, on the other hand, provides an ideal "branded" environment for the delivery of both.” You can now read the complete interview, which includes more discussion on AdME's game plans, as well as thoughtful insight into how a small developer can compete in the larger mobile industry (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).