It's similar, but the odd difference is that with advertising, people who see the ad either buy the product or do not.
With "freemium" games, 99% of people who see the ads and start actively using your product do so for free, or next to nothing, and then there's this 1% dumping vast amounts of money into the game and keeping it afloat for the rest of the 99%. Not out of any love or charity for the community, but just to give themselves a huge advantage and raise their in-game social status.
If I had to compare it to anything, it'd be a public library, where most people check out books for nothing, and then the occasional philanthropist walks in to cut a huge check and keep the doors open. Only in this case, the philanthropist would be SUPER competitive with everyone who gets to use the library for free and spends all day pointing to a huge stack of books that only HE gets to read, looking down at the free users and insulting their mothers.
It's similar, but the odd difference is that with advertising, people who see the ad either buy the product or do not.
With "freemium" games, 99% of people who see the ads and start actively using your product do so for free, or next to nothing, and then there's this 1% dumping vast amounts of money into the game and keeping it afloat for the rest of the 99%. Not out of any love or charity for the community, but just to give themselves a huge advantage and raise their in-game social status.
If I had to compare it to anything, it'd be a public library, where most people check out books for nothing, and then the occasional philanthropist walks in to cut a huge check and keep the doors open. Only in this case, the philanthropist would be SUPER competitive with everyone who gets to use the library for free and spends all day pointing to a huge stack of books that only HE gets to read, looking down at the free users and insulting their mothers.
Or something.