Saturday, September 09, 2006

Interactive Advergaming

Advergaming “is the practice of using games, particularly computer games, to advertise or promote a product, organization or viewpoint”. What we have here is only a cold definition, we are talking about games, real computer or console games.

A few years ago the Internet began an exponential growth based on many new emerging technologies that made possible great bandwidth for users at a reasonable cost, and “browser” technologies like flash and Ajax.
So advergaming was moved from real world to the Internet for the last 5 years. Well I think this monster has mutated:

Long time ago, some of the top 500 companies invested a small piece of their marketing budget to get a “sponsored” game, Budweiser and 7up at the beginnings.
10 years have passed and today advergaming is a real fact with a 100 Millions U$S global market share and a 1.000 Millions U$S market share estimated for the 2010. We can see advergames everywhere, not only on the Internet, but in “real” games for PS, Gamecube, Xbox and computers. We could take “Winning eleven” (The best “Soccer” game ever) as an explicit example: It has a lot of advertises around the field.

Internet has provided the next step for advergaming and now we can clearly use it as a powerful marketing tool at a really low price. It has changed the marketing strategy itself, not only because the “advergame” benefits, but because this e-marketing enhanced model let you know what your clients are doing at real time, and yes, it works for you as a marketer, because it will show you a real time world of metrics that you have never seen before with your expensive offline marketing actions. That’s why I have defined this as:

Interactive Advergaming

Think about it for a second, why should I read your promotional e-mail? What in hell will force me to stay in your website for more than 30 seconds? Do you really think that users enjoy reading about your product benefits?
Well, I don’t have the answers because I don’t know how your e-marketing strategy is, but what I can tell you based on my experience is that your client will be happier if he spend the same time playing a little game that is telling the story of your product benefits in a non-invasive way.
And probably, if you have selected the right Agency to develop your advergame, it will be “viral” so your client will share and promote his experience (and your game) with his friends.
The EIAA (European Interactive Advertising Association) has a real fact: they say that a standard publicity campaign increases the buyer intention in 2% , while a advergaming campaign increases it around a 15%.

I-advergaming is not for all audiences, but you could think about it as a low cost way to involve your clients in your campaign story within a interactive way, with real time knowledge of their actions, and a deeper brand memory-retention .Of course don’t forget that this is only one of your marketing mix variables…

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heey, i have a lot of questions about this!, could you help me to undertand the I-advergaming benefits?

Anonymous said...

I can't think of an advergame that is not interactive... would that be a movie?

Anonymous said...

Nope, because a movie isnt a advergaming online action. I will explain this in a new post.. : )

Thanks for your comment!
Vic