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”?

Advergaming Frontiers

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Via Clickable Culture comes this CBS news/Gamecore story (and a critique of the story) on advertising in videogames. I’ve not played these games yet so I’ve not seen the ads, but have to admit I’ll be diving in soon. However, in the meantime I suspect Clickable is on the mark in its critique. After all, isn’t the whole point of advertising to get noticed? Seems to me someone like a McDonald’s executive would pay good money to get their golden arches into a futuristic game like the Mars colony based Doom3 – it’d imply that their company will be around a long time and be a great long-term investment. What other kind of advertising has such potential? You could even have the bad guys hold “future” corporate executives hostage (bet they’re still caucasian males). If we’re lucky we can just shoot them too and end the standoff with the baddies. Hey, some of us aren’t interested in gameplay interruptus.

Maybe someone should show a proper example of “subtle and inconspicuous” advertising. We could start with branded litter on the streets of Grand Theft Auto (oh look, an IGN website).

Book On Virtual Branding

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Betsy Book has posted an announcement over on Terra Nova that her latest paper, “Virtual World Business Brands: Entrepreneurship and Identity in Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming Environments“, is available for download. Get it here.

This is a subject that’s been occupying my mind of late, though regarded from perhaps a slightly different perspective. I look forward to reading this.

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.

…

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.