Tag Archives: #advertising

Personalized Marketing aka CRM

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Adage (free registration) has a revealing article online that’s tied to virtual spaces (even though it may not seem like it is). It’s called “In Search of Marketing’s Future“. You can guess some of what that future is if I’m talking about it. From the article:

The event {Outlook 2005}, which came one year after McDonald’s CMO Larry Light declared the death of mass marketing, made clear that there is life after that death — namely in the form of hyper-targeted one-to-one marketing strategies that use a variety of technologies.

That sounds sufficiently innocent; almost friendly even. As do a couple other quotables. But here’s the a piece of the article that caught my attention:

“We built this huge umbrella. We looked strongly and deeply at the internet,” Mr. Weedfald said. “The internet has very little value unless you understand the back end of something called CRM. It’s about tracking, converting and retaining customers 24 hours a day, utilizing the power of wireless and the internet.”

Is now a good time to talk about the “tracking” and spying tools that are already employed in virtual worlds? These comments sure make it sound like Big Brother has siblings. Should that be “restraining”?

Hype Can Be a Bad Thing

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Via the MIT AdLab, Forbes is carrying their own article about advertising in online gaming. From the article:

Lost in the talk this week of the new videogames from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo is that these consoles will provide an ideal platform for advertisers.

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Realism is key to many games, and real life is a place where ads and commercial products crop up all the time.

I wonder if that demographic they keep citing and which by now some of us probably have memorized (“18 to 34 year old males with disposable incomes who are increasingly less likely to watch TV”) puts off some corporations – especially those who are neither in the electronics industry nor aware of the particular advantages available to them in this new arena. More importantly, when are they going to start asking where the women are? It’s not like there are no females in games or virtual worlds. I mean, one look at the crap on TV and they can’t believe women are sitting there watching that stuff.

Billions and Billions…

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… of dollars.

From this Yahoo/AP press release:

Game publishers have to recognize that there are millions, if not billions, of dollars in advertising money coming their way in the next few years,” said Justin Townsend, chief executive of IGA Partners Europe, an agency that places in-game ads for clients.

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Until very recently, advertisers weren’t rushing to place products in video games. They spent only $34 million in 2004 on in-game ads – a far cry from the billions spent on television advertising.

But that amount is expected to explode to $562 million by 2009, according to The Yankee Group research firm. Including “advergames” – games built solely to promote a product – game advertising will approach $1 billion by the end of the decade, the firm predicts.

which is essentially the same thing written in today’s Wired online article. Maybe it’s not “Want a Coke With That Railgun?”. Maybe instead it’s “You Need a Coke to Power That Railgun”.

Both stories via Blue’s News.

Advertising and Videogame Spectators

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Simply put: advertisers are already planning to target their ads at videogame tournament spectators. From Yahoo News/Reuters:

Peter Moore, the Microsoft vice president in charge of advertising for the Xbox business, described a scenario where a virtual race hosted by a corporate sponsor, with thousands of gamers competing for a grand prize while their buddies and competitors watch online.

Read all about it here.

Buzz Marketing Realities

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BusinessWeek online has an article covering Audi’s “Art of the Heist” marketing campaign. An interesting read. Couple of neat moments/quotes from the story: “sucking people into the intake” and “connecting the auto people with the gaming people was a huge bonus”. Someone is gonna get hurt. But it’s okay. They have a full-time lawyer on the ad team.