Virtual Worlds: The Next Realm in Advertising?
by Bill Nissim
What do Major League Baseball, Coca Cola, Well Forgo Bank, the W Hotel, and the American Cancer Society have in common? They all use a virtual realm to reach out to potential customers and supporters in novel ways.
Today, traditional media captures less attention from the younger generation, including the young at heart. New venues that address this demographic are evolving. One such approach to connect to this allusive audience is videogame advertising. Consider Massive Corporation, which is now part of Microsoft. The premise of Massive is to reach "Lost Boys" (ages 18 to 34) who pay less attention to mainstream media.
The advertising spend for this market segment is estimated at $12 billion for television and another $10 million on static product placements in videogames. The challenge for advertisers is a declining use of television due to other distractions (Internet, music, messaging) or simply "skipping" ads via TiVo or other recording devices. Another age-old problem for advertisers is the inability to directly measure results or return on investment (ROI).
Massive Corporation's value proposition was to "insert" a series of ads into select Internet-based videogames, visible during play. Massive worked with videogame publishers to install code into their programs allowing for dynamic advertisements to flow into place cards within the gaming environment. Concurrently, impression data flowed back to Massive to be packaged as data for the advertiser. This data allowed the advertiser to adjust content on an ongoing basis for greater effectiveness.
For the first time, advertisers had real-time data about their ads which where directly targeted to the audience they sought. Since most Internet gaming environments require payment and personal information, demographic detail increased.
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