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Time is money. And if you are spending your time staring at a mobile phone, then that is where the money is. Advertisers know that – eMarketer expects ad spending on mobiles to grow 92 per cent this year. But the mobile gaming world is struggling to win its fair share of those ad dollars.
时间就是金钱。如果你花时间盯着手机看，那就是潜在的盈利机会。广告商知道这个道理——市场研究公司eMarketer预测今年手机广告支出将增长92%。但移动游戏行业似乎难以争取到其中的合理份额。
Android users spend a third of their device time playing games, says Flurry, an analytics company owned by Yahoo. By comparison, Facebook gets 17 per cent of phone time. But advertising in mobile games – about $6bn a year – is less than Facebook’s mobile ad revenue. The business model is different – for now: mobile games make their money from in-app purchases, to the tune of $18bn this year, with sales growing 20 per cent annually.
雅虎(Yahoo)旗下的分析公司Flurry表示，Android用户使用手机的三分之一时间花在玩游戏上。相比之下，Facebook占手机使用时间的17%。然而手机游戏广告（一年约60亿美元）却少于Facebook的手机广告收入。两者商业模式不同，至少目前如此：手机游戏广告商通过应用内消费来赚钱，今年销售额为180亿美元左右，年度销售增幅达20%。
But the growth in mobile ad spending is a lost opportunity for the gaming industry. One reason is that no one has quite figured out how to do mobile game ads well. Banner ads are tacky. And ads that are successful demand a lot of development work – such as the virtual Lexus in Real Racing 3 (by Electronic Arts). Some companies, such as Tencent, eschew ads altogether. But as it is, mobile games are less lucrative than their console counterparts. Average revenue per user in mobile games is only one-tenth of the Arpu for console games, according to Interpret.
然而手机广告支出的增长对游戏行业是一个错失的机会。原因之一是，还没有人完全明白该怎么做好手机游戏广告。横幅广告很俗气。而成功的广告需要很多开发工作——例如在电子艺界(Electronic Arts)开发的游戏“真实赛车3”中，那款虚拟雷克萨斯(Lexus)汽车。有些公司，例如腾讯(Tencent)，完全放弃了广告。但就现状而言，手机游戏没有游戏机那么有利可图。根据市场研究公司Interpret的数据，每个手机游戏用户产生的平均收入，仅为游戏机用户的十分之一。
True, some gaming groups do mobile better than others. At Electronic Arts, mobile accounts for a fifth of revenues after 30 per cent growth last year. At Activision Blizzard, by contrast, mobile provides just 6 per cent of sales (excluding distribution), and mobile revenues have fallen by half from the same period last year.
没错，有些游戏公司做得比较出色。在电子艺界，手机游戏收入去年增长30%之后，如今占总收入的五分之一。相比之下，动视暴雪(Activision Blizzard)的手机只占销售的6%（不含分销），而且手机收入同比下降了一半。
But there is a long way to go for the industry as a whole. The prize will be valuable for whoever cracks the code first: Android users spend 37 minutes a day playing mobile games on average, says Flurry. That figure rises to more than 45 minutes daily in the US and Germany. There’s more money here than in just buying extra lives.
但对整个行业来说，还有很长的路可走。谁先解决这个难题，谁就能赢得大奖。Flurry称，Android用户每天平均花37分钟玩手机游戏。在美国和德国，该数字超过每天45分钟。拉广告创收的机会大于鼓励用户购买更多“生命”。
