This week Google expands its suite of advertising technology with Trial Run ads, which are designed explicitly to stream playable demos of mobile games as ads in other mobile apps.
Game demos have always been used as advertisements, so this is notable chiefly for bringing the relationship full circle for mobile game developers.
While the rise of free-to-play game design has obviated some of the need for developers to release separate, “lite” versions of their mobile games as demos to attract potential players, this new Trial Run ad tech takes things one step further by eliminating the need for players to download anything.
Instead, they can tap on an ad and play up to sixty seconds of your game as it’s remotely streamed from a virtual machine running on Google’s servers. If they dig it, they just tap again to download it.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s built upon the playable ad tech pioneered by app streaming startup Agawi. Google acquired the company back in June, and is now beta testing Trial Run ads with a limited pool of advertisers ahead of a full rollout.
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2015