• by Ross Fadner , August 12, 2004

Strong usage numbers are the first thing advertisers look for in evaluating an online media buy. Of course, there are many different classifications for strong usage numbers, but a site that averages several page views per user and a long average time spent per user is attractive to almost any media plan. It's called stickiness--a trait that more and more Web publishers are going after.

GartnerG2 Research Director Denise Garcia notes that any site that depends on advertising revenue aspires to be a sticky site. "The stickier the site, the more attractive the audience [will be to advertisers], because it's a recurring audience," she said. She warns that for sites not aspiring to be Web portals, they could fall into the trap of "stretching themselves wide and not very deep." Garcia adds that for broad sites with a broad reach, behavioral targeting could be an effective advertising option, but not smaller sites that are already heavily targeted.

Stickiness also opens the door to other unique marketing opportunities, like advergaming. Neopets.com, a community site in which users create, care for, and entertain Pokemon-like pets, is a good example. Here is a site that averages 4 hours and 47 minutes per user per month (the most in the world for a site with over 600,000 monthly uniques), and 1,348 monthly page views per user, but doesn't sell "traditional" online ad units like banners, leaderboards, or rich media opportunities.

Instead, Neopets sells what they call "immersive advertising," which essentially is interactive sponsorships, usually in the form of a branded game or activity. Examples include a Disney Theater, where owners and pets can watch upcoming Disney box office or DVD releases and play Disney-themed advergames; a McDonald's activity house; and General Mills theme park.

While these are examples of prominent position, long-term, and permanent partnerships, Neopets also sells branded advergames in its games arena. Rik Kinney, executive vice president, Neopets.com, says that advertisers collaborate with NeoPets on sponsored games, which usually require lead times of between one week and a month.

Once a game is launched, Kinney says that it's not unusual for the game to get 20,000-30,000 plays per day. For one unnamed consumer packaged goods product, brand and product awareness rose from 87 percent to 95 percent as a result of playing the branded game. Aided brand awareness for the same product was nearly even with television for those who played the game in the last month (80 percent for TV and 77 percent for Neopets). For those who did not play the game, brand awareness on the Neopets site dropped to 35 percent.

For an unnamed movie launch, there was a 44 percent difference in awareness between non-Neopets members (42 percent) and members (86 percent), who were exposed to a game activity and several buttons on the Neopets toolbar prior to the movie's launch. Among Neopets members who played the game, awareness was 91 percent, versus 83 percent for those who did not.

According to a recent "Stickiest" poll by Nielsen//NetRatings, Neopets.com ranked fourth in terms of stickiness, at 4:34 minutes per user per month. The other sites in the top five were PokerStars.com, AOL.com, the Gay.com Network, and Juno.com.