Two executives from Xfire took Summit attendees on a tour of four different channels for reaching the increasingly important gamer audience.
On Monday afternoon at iMedia's Breakthrough '06 Summit, Xfire VP of Sales Mike Ayer and VP of Marketing and Business Development Adam Boyden walked the audience through four different ways of getting a marketing message in front of gamers. Those four channels are:
- Through communities driven by desktop applications: e.g., Xfire
- Through game-oriented websites: e.g., GameSpot, GameDaily
- Through in-game advertising: e.g., Massive Inc.
- Through made-particularly-for-marketing advergames: e.g., WildTangent
Of the four channels, the first, desktop applications, needs the most explanation for marketers who are new to games. These applications sit on a user's desktop during game play. They commonly have ad units within them, and can also be skinned or branded.
Xfire's own application is a good example: with nearly four million registered users, the application lets hardcore PC gamers (as opposed to Xbox or PlayStation console gamers) know when their friends are online and available to play. During game play, the Xfire application also allows gamers to trade instant messages. On average, Xfire says its users have the application open 91 hours each month during game play.
Before diving into the heart of their presentation, Ayer and Boyden briefly profiled the gamer, who is predominantly young and male (nearly three quarters of males 18 to 34 are gamers) with an average age of 28 ("older than you think"). Gamers are also consumers with a lot of disposable income: in 2004, gamers spent $11 billion in the United States just on game consoles, software and accessories.
According to Ayer and Boyden, the two key drivers for reaching the gaming consumer are "engagement" (a much-used word throughout the Summit and in the industry generally) and "functionality." Engaged marketing both promotes communication and gets the gamer more involved with gaming, while the index of functionality is how useful an application, website or advertisement is for the gamer. "The more integral to the gamer's lifestyle," Boyden said, "the more powerful any marketing will be in getting its message across."
Ayer and Boyden outlined seven key points that marketers should keep in mind when asking sales reps about the four different ways of reaching gamers, as well as how appropriate each channel is for a particular brand.
Flexibility: This is, "the ability to change things with [a gaming] property once it goes out," Boyden said, with "rapid turnaround" of changes a key question. Websites like GameSpot and GameDaily have an advantage here. Another benefit, Ayer notes, is that if a marketer is trying to reach multiple demographics (for example, gamers, sports enthusiasts and movie buffs), then the same or similar creative might be used across different sites.
Lead time: With long development cycles on the part of game creators, in game advertisements and advergaming are at a disadvantage, whereas websites like GameSpot and social computing applications like Xfire have an advantage.
Engagement: Overall, Boyden noted, "Games, of course, are spectacular" in the engagement they promote with consumers. "The relationship that you have with people is enormous." Since gamers can spend endless hours with an individual game, twinning a marketing message to that time spent can be powerful. Logically, then, in game advertising and advergaming have an advantage over game-oriented websites and applications, although Boyden did say that this sort of engagement is limited to one game title at a time, whereas applications like Xfire can work across multiple titles.
Functionality: For Mojo Master, an AXE advergame "the average player went over 12 hours," according to Ayer. With a well-executed advergame, "a brand can be integral to the game play." In game banners are typically less functional, since players only experience them passively. Likewise, Ayer and Boyden contend that reviews of and articles about games are less functional than the other three channels for reaching gamers. Applications, on the other hand, extend the actual experience of game play, and as such are highly functional.
Relevance: "How can you be certain your message is targeted to the right audience?" Boyden asked. Games afford marketers a platform for "incredibly targeted and sophisticated behavioral campaigns." In game advertising and websites, Boyden contended, are relatively limited when it comes to relevance. In game advertising targets only an individual title rather than demographics or psychographics, and the users "can range across a very wide demographic."
Websites, one presentation slide stated, can only "target ads to specific pages based on content and by geography." (Editor's note: see the extensive Behavioral Marketing section of iMedia's website for more information on the behavioral targeting capabilities of websites.)
In contrast, advergaming targets specific groups that are predisposed to liking the brands creating the games, while gaming applications can target ads based on aggregated data about each user's age, gender, geography and overall gaming behavior.
Customization: None of the four ways to market to gamers received high marks when it came to customization, although each channel has its strengths Applications like Xfire -- Ayer said that 60 percent of all Xfire placements are customized -- and websites can develop skins to a marketer's specifications. Similarly, with enough lead time any element for in game advertising can be changed, but the marketer is limited to the size of the ad unit. Advergames are the most customizable, but that customization is only possible early in the design phase. And, as Ayer noted, "once it's out there, it's out there forever," even if a campaign ends, a logo changes or the like.
Measurement: Demonstrable ROI is, of course, a key concern of all interactive marketing, and this includes games. With both desktop applications and websites, "you can actually target the key influencers within their communities," said Boyden. In contrast, measurement is a major challenge for both in game advertising and advergames. For in game advertising that is experienced offline, "you have absolutely no clue." Similarly, for advergames there is often no possible measurement "because it is downloadable and it's offline."
Ayer and Boyden concluded their presentation with two quick case studies of how Xfire markets to gamers.
The first concerned AXE deodorant. The brand "wanted to do something one step above consumer-generated marketing" and see if they could create "consumer distributed marketing," Ayer said. So it created a series of short game-oriented videos featuring spokesmen Evan and Gareth that spread virally from Xfire and had no ad placements. The early videos did not even mention AXE, although eventually the brand became more visible. The campaign registered over half a million downloads and a significant increase in brand awareness and intent to buy for AXE.
More conventionally, Dodge Charger created a skin for the Xfire application as part of its "Unleash Your Freak" campaign. Getting the skin in front of Xfire's nearly four million users resulted in 11,500,000 total user minutes in front of the skin over the course of five weeks.
In Q&A after the presentation, one attendee asked Ayer and Boyden about the overall size of the PC gaming population in the United States. Boyden responded that there are 20 million PC gamers in North America, in contrast to the 33 million console gamers. However, Boyden noted that "most console gamers are playing unconnected to the network" and are therefore largely out of the reach of marketers.
Brad Berens is executive editor for iMedia Communications.
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