Advertising and Gaming
Today I got to a very interesting presentation and panel discussion on In-Game Advertising, which was on as a part of Advertising Week here in NY. There was a lot of talk about the 'high levels of engagement' of advertising in this medium, but not much about the risk of seriously annoying the highly engaged gamers. Mitch Davis, GM, Massive for Microsoft, said they had various types of ads (2D, 3D, products, videos etc) dynamically being served into more than 45 titles currently, aiming to get to 100+ in 2007.
There were some innovative case studies of when in-game branding had worked, and given that the industry is already under fire from some parts of Congress here, there was some discussion about the need to tread carefully. For example, the gaming companies are not accepting liquor, smoking or firearms-related advertising at this time (of course, the US Army is one of the biggest gaming advertisers as it reaches a captive audience of smoking/drinking kids who are practising shooting people).
I spoke to Mitch afterwards about the Australian market and we had a good chat about how levels of connectivity are driving advertising revenue in each of the world's Xbox-launched regions (58% of Xbox 360 owners are online users, which is ten times that of the previous Xbox). I also asked him about how the PS3 was being perceived in the industry and he said he suspected that Sony moving back the European/Aus launch date by six months, had probably cost a company like EA about $US150m (from strength to strength, Sony).
The Microsoft Digital Advertising solution launched this week, gives Xbox Live quite a lot of prominence (alongside MSN, Windows Live, Office, Mobile, TV). Some of the reaction here is that this is simply a rebranding of what they already offer via MSN, and that until the newer channels take off, it will not have a big impact on the industry. That said, collecting niche audiences (eg, Males 18-34), identifying them (Windows Live ID, Xbox Gamertags) and highly relevant inventory (via AdCenter) is pretty compelling.
In a recent study the BBC found that 100% of males 11-14 are gamers. I think that makes it mainstream.
There were some innovative case studies of when in-game branding had worked, and given that the industry is already under fire from some parts of Congress here, there was some discussion about the need to tread carefully. For example, the gaming companies are not accepting liquor, smoking or firearms-related advertising at this time (of course, the US Army is one of the biggest gaming advertisers as it reaches a captive audience of smoking/drinking kids who are practising shooting people).
I spoke to Mitch afterwards about the Australian market and we had a good chat about how levels of connectivity are driving advertising revenue in each of the world's Xbox-launched regions (58% of Xbox 360 owners are online users, which is ten times that of the previous Xbox). I also asked him about how the PS3 was being perceived in the industry and he said he suspected that Sony moving back the European/Aus launch date by six months, had probably cost a company like EA about $US150m (from strength to strength, Sony).
The Microsoft Digital Advertising solution launched this week, gives Xbox Live quite a lot of prominence (alongside MSN, Windows Live, Office, Mobile, TV). Some of the reaction here is that this is simply a rebranding of what they already offer via MSN, and that until the newer channels take off, it will not have a big impact on the industry. That said, collecting niche audiences (eg, Males 18-34), identifying them (Windows Live ID, Xbox Gamertags) and highly relevant inventory (via AdCenter) is pretty compelling.
In a recent study the BBC found that 100% of males 11-14 are gamers. I think that makes it mainstream.
posted by Dave King at 8:01 AM
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