What’s your game?

Jameson Hsu reports about in-game advertising online on the Adotas blog.  It’s an excellent report on the popularity of online gaming and how to leverage their advertising value.  Web-based games are extremely popular, visted by over 30% of all online users around the world.  As Jameson points out:

“(Online) games appeal to teens, moms and seniors alike who fuel the enormous demand throughout the world to play them. In parallel with this trend, game advertising technology has emerged enabling advertisers to reach the engaged gaming audience with rich, targeted ads that allow independent game developers to make money.”

In short, online games aren’t like PC games which may be distributed online (or via retail) for a fee.  These games are usually free to the user and can reach millions of people each month via thousands of web sites where they provide free, entertaining content.

Video ads, embedded inside the games themselves, are able to deliver customers much more effective than more traditional banner or text advertising located near the game.  Ads shown as pre-game trailers can deliver up to 3% click-throughs due to the ads’ placement directly in front of engaged consumers.

According to Jameson, the key areas for adverisers to take into account when considering this medium are:

1. Who’s playing the games?
2. How are the games distributed?
3. What kind of metrics are available for evaluation purposes?
4. What types of ads seem to be most successful with this medium?

Be sure to read the entire blog post.  It’s highly informative.  In the meantime, we’ll keep looking for information on in-game advertising (for both online, game unit and PC games) and add it to our content.