Advertising In Games: A Growing Trend
Advertising is apparently spreading quite rapidly to the gaming environment
. On the one hand there are the social games where advertising of brands has started acquiring a fair degree of sophistication. On the other hand, new video-game environments like the Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect have also been invaded now by a number of brand-based games.
According to eMarketer, advertising spending on gaming has increased by at least 60% since 2009. It is believed that about 56 million Americans are playing some form of social or video games. The very important trend noticed here seems to be that advertisers are now paying a lot of attention to this whole gaming market. Brands and advertising agencies seem to have discovered that the gaming environment is totally conducive to advertising.
Robert Tomkinson, Senior Director of Global Marketing of the firm Playfish, speaking at the Social Gaming Summit remarked on this growing trend: Media buyers and advertisers are recognizing that this is what they want. What they want is massive reach, they want targeting, and they want performance. And you can have all of these by forming branding opportunities in the right way.
There may be many reasons why advertising in social gaming is growing so prolifically, but here are the some of the most important factors:
Games producers are now offering advertisers branded games. In many cases branding has been allowed as part of the game environment and not just a mention of a brand as a sponsor. For example, the Facebook game Farmville allowed advertisers to brand their farming crops, and thus the game carried the specially branded Cascadian Farm Blueberries. It has been reported that in more than 500 million cases, players preferred to buy and plant the branded blueberries instead of something other unbranded crops. Unaided brand awareness has been calculated to have increased by 550% as a result.
Another ploy for brands in social games is an offer wall inside many games. Brands are allowed space within the game to advertise deals and offers. In some cases, brands have developed exchange offers such as virtual rewards for engagement (for example, taking a survey or watching a video about a new product).
Social gaming is becoming more easily accessible than television. Although many gaming platforms previously have needed expensive consoles, joypads and other equipment and peripherals, most social games are free to play. This increases their attraction. The barrier to entry has thus been very low for first-time online gamers. Further mobile smartphones now have further increased access to social gaming.
Zyngas Director of Brand Advertising, Manny Anekal, has noted in his presentation that he hates to use the terminology social games because the experiences that Zynga creates are just fun with your family friends. Simple as that. Being such, social games can easily reach demographics far beyond the typical gamer profile.
Talking of the newer video-games environments, the Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect uses a very interesting technology that seems to have made it immensely popular even with non-gamers. In the Kinect technology, the joypad is totally eliminated as the game-controller, and instead the Kinect package uses sensors to pick up body movements and gestures of gamers playing the games. If a participant were to stand in front of the Kinect box (usually placed at the base of the TV screen), it would replicate the gamers own body movements for a chosen Avatar on the screen. Thus the gamer can make his Avatar go through a host of adventures using his own body motions to help the Avatar fend off enemies or take advantage of a whole host of on-screen situations.
Intel has recently launched a whole brand game on the Kinect that lets gamers select Avatars and activate them in movie sequences as if they were actors in the plot. Nike on the other hand has created a Kinect exercising program for home-based fitness training, where the gamers exercise motions are replicated by on-screen Avatars and checked for movement precision by on-screen coaches.
These are but a few of the pioneering brands in the game space. Trend-watchers believe that what we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg. However, as more brands look to exploit this new format of advertising it is also important that they innovate. Even if the medium itself is novel, most brands will still need to develop radically different game campaigns to make a mark in the gaming space.
by: Marianne B. Conway
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