Audience domination, in action
While other boxes have struggled to get space on consumer's entertainment shelves, game consoles have thrived, and fast adoption rates have allowed them to surpass any other device that attempted to get connected to the big TV. Game consoles have evolved their offerings to reach a broader audience via games for every age and gender with movies, TV shows, original content and, yes, advertising. Multiple studies have shown that advertising done by leveraging gaming delivers on results and often surpasses traditional, and even online, offerings. A recent study by NeoEdge and Frank Magid on Zappos.com showed unaided brand awareness that was five-times more than that of TV advertising.
I have seen similar results for our OMD clients across multiple campaigns in-game and within spaces such as Xbox Live -- and sometimes the results are even better! For Doritos, we asked users to come up with an idea for a downloadable game on Xbox Live. A community of thousands of people responded with their game concepts, as well as feedback for each other's creations. Doritos UnlockXbox was a true multiple touchpoint campaign, including calls-to-action on product packaging, a dedicated site that garnered 600,000 uniques, customizable gamer tags, and video documentaries on Xbox Live and online. Over 100,000 users voted to decide a winner, and a few months later the game, "Doritos Dash of Destruction," became the fastest game to reach one million downloads in Xbox Live history. Gamers have been playing "Doritos Dash of Destruction" an average of 30 minutes, which translates into over half a million viewing hours and going.
For Nissan, we delivered content on Xbox Live that had nothing to do with gaming but everything to do with the male 18-34 target that spends over 8.5 hours a week on Live. The Nissan 370Z campaign on Xbox Live offered users information on the car packaged in a completely new and exciting way. A multi-platform program with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition allowed Nissan to bring unique content to the Xbox Live audience, including the first SI Swimsuit edition calendar available on the console, as well as long form videos in HD featuring the Z and the Swimsuit Models. There was even a sweepstakes that users could sign up for right on their Xbox.
While in-game advertising is still an art and challenging to scale, Xbox Live, PS3 Store/Home and other upcoming offerings provide not only scale but fully measurable results as well.
What's next?
We recently learned from Nielsen that consoles alone are as big as the fifth-largest "network." This past December, the numbers for consoles usage for video gaming, movies and other content was more than 64 billion minutes. So it is no surprise that there are new companies out there trying to compete for that pie.
An interesting recent announcement is a new game platform called OnLive. The company is the next venture for WebTV founder Steve Perlman and former Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey, and is a new system that is 100 percent based on digital distribution of games. It leverages cloud computing (virtualized resources to make it work) and promises to be the next big thing for gamers. The system does not require downloads and instead streams games via custom servers. The benefit here is top performance for AAA PC titles without the need for expensive high-end computers. OnLive promises that users, who in the past had to spend $5,000 or more to run a high-spec game such as "Crysis" properly, can now play that game via this system for a fraction of the cost.
The announcement has raised many eyebrows, but regardless of its success OnLive is highlighting a path started by the game consoles, where more and more highly entertaining content is delivered right to your home. For an increasing number of consumers out there, games are more compelling than the traditional passive entertainment experiences and so they spend more time playing than watching. The increase of digital distribution of games and other content will offer more opportunities for advertisers on gaming consoles and what we have seen so far is pointing to a better solution for advertising on your TV screen.
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Dario Raciti is director, Ignition Factory Gaming, at OMD.
