Digital River Research Paper and Webinar Explore Monetization Strategies Key to Driving Digital Game Profits


With largest source of digital gaming revenue coming from in-game content, games companies must innovate to capitalize on ecommerce opportunities

 MINNEAPOLIS — April 29, 2016 — Digital River, Inc., a leading global provider of Commerce-as-a-Service solutions, announced it is releasing the results of its newest research report, “Best Practices: User Conversion, Payment Flows & In-Game Economy Management,” during an upcoming free webinar. The webinar, set for Wednesday, May 4 at 12:00 p.m. CDT, and the research report will explore how games publishers can improve monetization techniques and ultimately drive additional revenue. The report provides insights into checkout best practices, gamer payment preferences and payment security sensitivities, among other topics. Webinar attendees will gain access to the research paper by signing up for the webinar here: http://driv.ws/cv.

Prepared for Digital River by SuperData Research, a leading provider of digital games research, the new report provides a variety of actionable insights for game developers. Highlights of the study include:

  • Additional content for PC games is expected to generate 75 percent of the total digital PC gaming market in 2016 — Approximately $19 billion of the global market’s $26 billion in revenue is expected to come from additional content, making it vital to retain and convert spenders.
  • Freemium monetization increases PC gamers’ sensitivity to checkout — Additional content purchases are more frequent, converting 9 percent of PC gamers versus 5 percent who purchase full games.
  • Entering billing information is the primary inconvenience for payers — Smooth and convenient payment flow that is fully branded to the game is vital to optimizing user conversions. Approximately 70 percent of both U.S. and German PC payers are most likely to abandon checkout while filling in payment information.
  • Payment methods can cause friction in the checkout process if not carefully considered — Finding the right mix of payment options, not too many or too few, is key to converting customers and driving revenue.

The findings are based on SuperData’s syndicated digital games sales data, totaling more than 378 million unique transactions from a user base of over 71 million across genres, such as MMO, console, mobile, PC and social games. In addition, a customized survey was carried out by SuperData, involving nearly 2,000 respondents from the U.S. and Germany.

“With the vast majority of developers’ total revenue opportunity occurring after the initial purchase, owning and converting the customer have never been more important to building long-term business success,” said Jeremy Coker, group vice president of games and entertainment at Digital River. “Developers who do not maximize and optimize their monetization techniques throughout the customer journey, put their full revenue potential at risk.”

For game producers and developers looking for additional educational resources, Digital River hosts on-demand webinars on its corporate website. For information about Digital River’s games and entertainment solutions, visit stg01dr.wpengine.com/games or email games@digitalriver.com.

About SuperData
Founded by veteran games industry researchers, SuperData is the leading provider of market intelligence covering the market for free-to-play gaming, digital console, mobile, PC downloadable, streaming media and eSports. Using digital point-of-sale data received from publishers, developers and payment service providers, SuperData’s analyses are based on the monthly spending of 48 million paying online gamers worldwide in combination with qualitative consumer insight. SuperData helps its customers understand what people play, connect to and spend on.

 About Digital River, Inc.
Backed by 20 years of ecommerce experience, Digital River is recognized as a leading global provider of Commerce-as-a-Service solutions. Companies of all sizes rely on Digital River’s cloud-based commerce, payments and marketing services to manage and grow their online businesses. Through these services, Digital River connects B2B and B2C digital products companies and branded manufacturers with buyers across multiple devices and channels, and nearly every country in the world.

Digital River is headquartered in Minneapolis with offices across the U.S., Asia, Europe and South America. For more details about Digital River, visit the corporate website, read the Digital River Blog, follow the company on Twitter or call +1 952-253-1234.

 Digital River is a registered trademark of Digital River, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks, registrations or copyrights of their respective owners.

 Twitter Tags: #webinar, #monetization, @DigitalRiverInc, #games, @_SuperData
Click to Tweet: Stop losing gamers & get a piece of the $25.5B opp; webinar w. @_SuperData & @DigitalRiverInc re: #monetization http://driv.ws/cs

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