Let me start out saying….there will always be arcades starting everyday. I think the arcade world as we know it will change and the smaller sites that can stay open will be for the love of gaming and not on rev. Granted, Adsesnse isn’t the BE ALL for rev, but it is or was the easiest one to get into. It also paid a tad better than other means.
I will also say this is my thoughts and I usually have wacked out ones. This thought is probably right there on the wack side!
I’m going to start out talking about a super store then bring it into the arcade world.
Wal-Mart – these stores are HUGE! Run 24x7. For those that don’t have them in your country yet:
You can bring you car in for service.
Walk into their clinic to have your kid looked at
Then get a script
Pick up your new glasses
Have your picture taken with new glasses
Food shop
Buy a TV
So on….HUGE! One stop shopping.
When Wal-Mart goes into a town to get permits to build, they are met with opposition from the towns folks. The biggest concern is the mom n pop business’s that have been around for years/generations will no longer exist. Usually when Wal-Mart comes in they lower prices and just destroy all the stores out there. Some of the mom and pops reinvent themselves, but still don’t operate like years past.
Onto arcades – Granted some ads are to close to games, but why are we all (close to all) are getting emails? There are not many on the forums that haven’t gotten the dreaded email. Also for the most part, we are small and a few a bit larger. We all look at REV and go to our accounts (not just adsense) daily to see how much we made. What better way to squeeze the industry? How many of us will stay in it with little to no rev? Right now we are trying to re-invent our sites and sources of rev.
We also keep hearing of Google arcade. I have a feeling this site will have every type of games there is and with their dev, possible 3D and other kewl stuff. They will be the Wal-Mart of arcades. Hit the small guys in the wallet!
Next step is go after the medium to larger sites. G will start a massive ad campaign running on their beloved adwords network. With the deep pockets G has they will “buy” or be highest bidder of spots. These spots will be targeted to run on other arcade sites and by cookie. This will force the med-larger sites to either pay more CPC for adwors or try other ways to advertise. Again, hitting the wallet and lets face it, Adwords has a much wider, biggest market! I also consider the money G spends to advertise is funny money, it rolls up to the same checkbook….they can’t lose! Left pocket <> right pocket.
G has a rep of buying out larger companies, that’s their MO. In the arcade world, there is way too many out there to do this so it’s the Wal-Mart model. Let’s look at their latest attempt of buying out groupon.com. They chased them and finally groupon said no. Hear say is the offer was close to 6 BILLION! What did G do soon after rejection? They started Google Offers, a groupon clone. It is funny going to groupon to see G ads there.
Just to be clear again….just my wacked thoughts. Also, there will always be the small arcade sites, but I don’t think it will be like it is today.
This is the longest post I ever did! This old man is tired…..going to take a nap!
RickyG
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