Advertise in a game in Nigeria

Why in-game advertising works in Nigeria

Most Nigerian advertising budgets go to two places: social media feeds and outdoor billboards. Both are crowded. On a feed, your post competes with every other post for half a second of attention. On a real roadside board, you pay for a location and hope the right people drive past and look up.

A game is different because players choose to be there and stay a while. Hometown players spend about half an hour a day in the game, moving through streets, entering buildings and talking to each other. When your business is part of that world, it is seen in context: a hungry player walks past your eatery, a player saving for a house reads your bank's savings tip, a player looking for data walks up to your kiosk.

It also reaches people who are hard to reach elsewhere. Many young Nigerians skip TV, rarely listen to radio and scroll past sponsored posts. A brand that shows up inside the places they enjoy is remembered differently from one that interrupts them.

What advertising inside Hometown looks like

Hometown is not a shooting game or a betting app. It is a city-life game: players build a house in their real hometown, run businesses, ride danfo and the metro, throw owambe and compete for their state. That makes it a natural home for everyday Nigerian brands, because the game is already about everyday Nigerian life.

There are four ways to appear in the game. Each one is a physical thing on the map, so players meet it while they play rather than in a pop-up.

• Billboards: your message on roadside boards in the state you choose, from ₦10k to ₦25k a week per state.
• Walk-in locations: a branded shop players can enter, such as an eatery with your real menu at real prices, a bank branch with a savings tip or a telecom kiosk, from ₦50k to ₦150k a month.
• Sponsored quests and tournaments: a task that sends players to your location, or a competition with a real prize, from ₦30k to ₦100k per campaign.
• Developer show-homes: a walk-through house for estate developers, at a monthly fee plus a fee per lead.

Pay for results, not placements

The biggest complaint Nigerian businesses have about advertising is that they cannot tell whether it worked. So every Hometown deal comes with a private results dashboard. It counts the players who walked into your shop or saw your billboard, the players who took your quest, every tap on “Visit website” and “Call us”, and every coupon code redeemed.

The coupon code is the most important number. It is a code only Hometown players receive, so when a customer uses it at your counter or on your website you know exactly where they came from. That turns a game placement into something you can compare with any other channel you pay for.

Start with a free two-week pilot

You do not need to commit a budget to find out whether in-game advertising works for your business. Every business starts with a free two-week pilot. We place you in the game, give you a coupon code and send you a short video of your branded shop so you can see it for yourself.

At the end of the two weeks you look at your dashboard. If the walk-ins, taps and redemptions are worth it, you move to a paid tier. If not, you stop, and it has cost you nothing but a conversation on WhatsApp.

Who it suits best

In-game advertising in Nigeria suits businesses that want young, mobile, urban customers and that can make a simple offer: food and drink, telecom and data, fintech and savings, fashion, phone accessories, events, education and property. It suits small businesses as much as big ones, because the smallest tier is a single weekly billboard in one state.

It is less suited to businesses that need long explanations or that cannot be shown in a friendly, everyday setting. Hometown is played by a broad audience, so we do not accept betting, alcohol or adult advertising.

How to get started

Tell us your business, your city and what you want people to do: walk in, call, visit your website or use a coupon. You can fill in the form on the Hometown for Businesses page or message us directly on WhatsApp. We reply with a placement idea and a start date for your pilot.