Marketers Connect With Video Gamers

• Posted: Saturday, March 29, 2008
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Digital Content, Marketing

Using games as part of integrated campaigns.

Dave Williams is senior vice president of MTV Networks' Shockwave.com and Addicting Games. Mr. Williams also held senior product and marketing positions at Listen.com, Real Networks, CitySearch and DoubleClick.

As it has with other key industry players, eMarketer spoke with Mr. Williams recently about how marketers are connecting with video gamers.

eMarketer: What have been the trends over the past year in in-game advertising and sponsored games?

Dave Williams: We're seeing much more adoption of the medium from many more advertisers.

We're seeing a shift from advergames, where a couple of years ago everybody wanted to build a game. Now the money is shifting much more toward in-game advertising and sponsorships, or customized games, like versions of Ciao Bella or Diner Dash that are customized to a particular marketer's brand.

The main factor driving this trend is that marketers have learned that advergames are big risky bets. It's better to integrate your brand with something already known and a proven entity.

We've heard anecdotally a lot more skepticism in the past year about console game advertising, partly because of the lack of measurability, and partly marketers are asking themselves, are these people really playing online?

Read more - eMarketer

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