iAnywhere Solutions' Crystal King covers the interactive marketing aspects of in-game advertising.
In today's high-tech world, advertisers and marketers must work harder than ever to reach a captive audience. The advent of digital video recorders, ad-blockers in browsers and do-not-call lists, has made it more imperative to find creative ways that ensure marketing messages are seen and heard. One way to do this? Embedded product placements -- in television, movies and most compelling of all, video games.
If you've ever played a sports video game, chances are you may have noticed the billboards along the edges of the playing field or arena, bringing a sense of realism to the game. After all, there is often a big Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks ad behind home plate when you flip on your TV to watch the Red Sox -- why would it seem out of place when playing baseball on your PS2 or Xbox?
Advertisers are banking on that notion that gamers won't mind seeing ads embedded in their games. In fact, advertisers spent $34 million on in-game ads in 2004, an amount that is expected to explode to $562 million by 2009, according to The Yankee Group. Including advergames, game advertising will approach $1 billion by the end of the decade.
So what's the difference between in-game advertising and an advergame? "In-game advertising might take the form of a billboard in a realistic video game while an advergame is a game that promotes a specific product," explained Chris Sherman, executive director of The Game Initiative. The game advertising market is so hot that The Game Initiative recently began producing the Advertising In Games Forum three times a year, in New York, San Francisco and London.
Microsoft is ready to capitalize on in-game advertising, recently announcing that the upcoming Xbox 360, due out in the fall, will have capabilities for full integration between the console's games and advertising. Massive head-to-head sporting competitions between players can easily take place, with additional charges for participation (providing a new opportunity for data collection), real monetary purses as prizes and full sponsorship by advertisers, just as you would see at real-time events. Even more interesting, spectators can tune in to the games, garnering those advertisers a captive audience. Additionally, the Xbox 360 will feature an online marketplace, giving game publishers the ability to sell new games alongside plug-ins for existing titles.
The in-game video market will change rapidly over the next few years with players such as Microsoft and Massive Inc. leading the charge. The Massive Network marries the online gaming world with advertising by partnering with game publishers to provide technology that allows advertisers to dynamically display, manage and track their in-game advertising buys. For example, let's go back to those in-game billboards mentioned earlier. Rather than having that Dunkin Donuts billboard as a permanent ad in a game, a more dynamic situation might be constructed, whereby the game would serve up different ads by different companies at specified times (peak or off-peak gaming times, which would in turn affect price), all the while tracking how many times one company shows up on an individual viewer's screen.
The advergame market is also booming, with new advergames making the headlines on a regular basis, including Mitsubishi Motors North America's "Thrill Ride Challenge," a virtual, timed driving race on one of six roads from around the world. The advergame promotes the car company's redesigned 2006 Eclipse, with top scorers eligible for prizes such as an Apple iPod or Mitsubishi flat-screen TV. In addition, Pepsi Lime is promoting its late entry into the lime-infused cola market with an advergame featuring two straw-fighting limes. Even the BBC has jumped on the bandwagon, promoting its new "Doctor Who" series through an advergame, which is attracting users from around the world.
Mobile marketers are taking notice of advergames, as they are more conducive to the medium than in-game advertising. "In-game advertising occurs primarily in PC and console games," said The Game Initiative's Sherman. "We're not seeing in-game advertising on mobile devices primarily because of the small screen size. With so many different types of mobile devices available, it is difficult for game developers to create more sophisticated games for mobile devices." He also added that without streaming capability, mobile phones are faced with an additional challenge to online mobile gaming.
The streaming limitation is bound to change with the increasing popularity of smartphones and wireless PDAs. As wireless technology and connectivity improve and these larger-screen devices become more mainstream, mobile video games will increase in popularity among mobile users, resulting in even more marketing and advertising opportunities for companies.
Still, there are already many early adopters realizing that mobile advergaming has advantages today. In my last column, I talked about Microsoft and its advergame campaign promoting Microsoft Office. It was so successful -- over 64,000 users downloaded the game -- that the company is running another advergame, this time with a "Jeopardy"-style trivia theme. The game quizzes users on a wide variety of trivia topics and once the user completes a round, an ad for Microsoft Office appears.
It's important to note that it's not just the big behemoth marketers such as Microsoft that are realizing the advantages of mobile advergames. Niche marketers can also take advantage of the medium. Eaton Corporation's Golf Grip Division, Golf Pride, is running a mobile campaign on smartphones and PDAs (the perfect audience for them -- affluent males aged 25 to 55) featuring an addictive golf game that brands its well-known golf grips. Players navigate through an extreme course of golf, all the while seeing the Golf Pride name in prominent places.
In-game advertising and advergames capitalize on what is one of the last few mediums to create a fully captive and often interactive audience. The ultimate victory for an advertiser is seeing a prospect exposed to their brand repeatedly or interacting with the brand for hours at a time. It's truly the future of advertising -- the idea of interacting with advertisements rather than simply viewing them on a flat surface. Games are just the first, natural step in this advertising evolution.
Crystal King is senior product marketing manager at AvantGo, a service of iAnywhere Solutions, a Sybase company. King oversees marketing, branding, communications and public relations for the AvantGo mobile internet service. Today, more than 2,500 major brands, including American Airlines, CNET, The New York Times, Rolling Stone and Volkswagen leverage AvantGo to target a highly desirable demographic of more than seven million registered users. Prior to joining iAnywhere, King was marketing director at Taxware, a First Data company. She has worked in high tech marketing for over twelve years at companies such as Nexaweb, Bowne, GE Capital and a handful of dot.com startups. She holds an M.A. in critical and creative thinking from the University of Massachusetts-Boston.