Pokémon Go to Sell Location Sponsorships

Pokémon Go sponsorships are moving sales, marketers report. Now, on a cost-per-visit basis, marketers can sponsor locations where players catch Pokémon.

The augmented reality app is selling the opportunities in Pokémon Go, which Target Marketing found had 10 million Google Play downloads as of Thursday evening.

“In an interview with the Financial Times, Niantic CEO John Hanke said that ‘sponsored locations’ would provide a new revenue stream, in addition to in-app purchases of power-ups and virtual items,” reads a TechCrunch article published on Wednesday. “In other words, retailers and companies will be granted the paid opportunity to be featured prominently on the game’s virtual map, in the hope to drive customers inside their facilities.”

This opportunity is not to be confused with the ones marketers already had to, as Hanke told TechCrunch, sponsor power-ups.

TechCrunch writes: “Some U.S. retailers have already found that being featured in the game can drive tons of real customers into their stores. ‘The amount of people has been astonishing,’ Tom Lattanzio, the owner of L’Inizio Pizza Bar in Long Island City, Queens, told The New York Post yesterday. The Financial Times reported that the pizza restaurant saw business increase 75 percent after buying a $10 in-game power-up that lured Pokémon to its location.”

[Author’s note: Sponsorships may not make sense for all marketers. Some are asking players to be more respectful. For instance, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum requested players not catch Pokemon inside the institution.]

What do you think, marketers?

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