Online games too would have different audiences. Thus, the target audience when marketing for the games or advertising on the games would also be different.
“The kind of person that buys a Wii is not the same kind of person that buys a PS3 or an Xbox,” said John Greiner, the chief executive of Hudson Entertainment, the North American arm of Hudson Soft. “You have to be very specific when you design a game and target not only the gameplay mechanics for that user, but also the marketing for that kind of a product launch.”
On a side point, I heard that advertising in games is not that effective, at least for people who love the game. On a study, they tracked the eye movement of the gamers of a racing game, and the ones who concentrated did not pay attention to the ads. Their eyes were glued to the car itself. Nonetheless, I guess that it works, since people keep advertising on games!
1 comment:
I wanted to touch on this point, because it's an area of interest for me and what we worked on for our term paper. There's so much hub-bub about videogame advertising these days, and oftentimes corporate-spun myths are enough to incite hysteric spending by advertisers, in fear that they're missing "the next big thing".
If you listen to oh, let's say, Massive, who makes a living off of placing those ads in racing games, they'll toss a thousand stats at you, talking about how "brand recall went up XX% with in-game advertising" (check out their website). That's fine and well, but what about Bunnyfoot's (a market research firm) report (http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20061221005340&newsLang=en) claiming that brand engagement from video games was actually lower than traditional forms of advertising? In-game ad networks like Massive love toting the fact that gamers find that in-game ads add to the realism of the gaming environment, but does that actually mean the ads are effectively communicating a marketing message?
The trouble, as with most forms of new media, is measuring ROI. There's not much in the way of keeping tabs of a gamer's consumer decisions after the in-game ad has been viewed. That's why I think the neatest solution for an advertiser to get into gaming these days is advergaming. You might find them on a lot of big corporation's homepages. They're neat, little games that are developed from the ground-up with the company's logo or mascot in mind, and are more brand-building experiences than attempts at hawking a product. But the brilliance lies in effectively converting neat gameplay into purchase decisions. You try to play the new Lego Indiana Jones game (http://indianajones.lego.com/en-us/games/default.aspx), and I dare you to resist checking out their online store for a gift for your niece or nephew, after you're done playing.
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