Adotas is quoting a new report from Parks Associates that says in-game advertising will reach $2 billion by 2012, which is not far off mind you.
Cai approximates that marketers spent $15 million on virtual worlds marketing projects last year, which doesn’t include branded virtual worlds efforts.
I assuming this includes what marketers are spending in Second Life. Check out the article.
I can’t believe its’ been a month since Facebook launched their developer API program. In that time we’ve gone from seeing Redbull and a handful of gaming related widgets to over 138 widgets from mainstream brands to lesser known ones. AllFacebook mentions the current rush we are seeing within the Facebook application community. With just over 600,000 users for the most popular gaming application to just under 17,000 from 10th placed application. It’ll be interesting to see what gaming application breaks the 1 million users mark. InsideFacebook has a recent article talking about the top 100 applications, which includes a handy graph. With Facebook as a whole having such a large built-in audience, I can’t help but see Facebook becoming a platform for social gaming (more on that in my next post).
Top Ten Gaming Applications
The list is pretty divers overall and besides being easy to play and use, there are no real common themes between all the gaming applications. What I would love to see is how often people are playing with the applications and for how long. For all we know the top game has only half the users actually playing with it while everyone else installed the application and forgot about it. There is an almost “me to” mentality going on right now. It’ll be fun the watch the gaming application section over the summer and beyond and see how things transgress.
Game|Life is pointing to a great article in Forbes questioning weather Second Life is worth the investment. I’ll have to check out the paper version on the way to work this week. In Second Life you can’t build it and forget it, you need to maintain it much like you do a garden.
My final piece in a three part (one and two) column at Gamasutra is live.
We are all consumers at some point, and if you remember why and how your favorite brand used online public relations in some funky way to leave a lasting impression on you then you’ll remember why you should make a lasting impression on your community.
Community is the key to rule them all… well not all of them but it is a way to build brand awareness. I find myself focusing on the community aspect of marketing lately and maybe I should find out why.
Neil Postlethwaite is part of the team making Enemy Territory: QUAKE WARS and posted a quick note about their new In-Game Ads system and why they are going this route to help cover development costs.
To help cover this level of on-going support without passing the costs on to the gamer, ETQW will feature appropriate advertisements in select locations of our levels. The ads aren’t intrusive and you won’t have to interact with them; they’ll just be part of the normal environment. In fact, there are some places it’s quite odd not to have an advertisement - the sides of container trucks, for example. Great care is being taken to ensure that all our ads are appropriate for the game world and we have absolute approval rights in this area. If it’s not appropriate or it’s distracting, it won’t go in.
The company providing the ad system does not and will not store any personal information or data that otherwise can be used to identify you. All they track is if and how long you look at the advertisements.
The last part of what Neil said is important to communicate with your community. Perception is reality for most people, and especial after Google bought AdScape Media and filed for their latest patent. Some of the crazy ideas I hear going around the web and what in-games ads can and can’t do it frightening to say the least. If you are going to start using in-games ads, then people need to start making sure everyone is on the same page. whether they are your employees, stakeholders or your community.
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