• Adweek, Tuesday, May 30, 2006 11 AM

Marketers are reticent about buying emerging media platforms like video games and social networks, according to fresh data from Forrester Research. In a survey of 253 interactive marketers, 72 percent of respondents said they have no plans to buy in-game advertising and advergaming. This is not surprising, given that advergaming really only suits those advertisers with enough money to create, find distribution and then buy media to market their advergames. In-game advertising, on the other hand, has such a small reach that it's only for those advertisers dying to reach die-hard 18- to 34-year-olds who spend the majority of their time in front of games like CounterStrike. As for mobile marketing, just 11 percent of respondents reported buying mobile phone ads, and 57 percent said they have no plans to do so in the next year. Meanwhile blogs and social networks, which were curiously thrown together in the survey, attracted just 13 percent of respondents, and nearly half of them said they have no plans to buy the likes of Gawker or MySpace in the coming year. Analyst Shar VanBoskirk said advertisers just aren't ready to buy these new media, and will likely stick to old Web standbys like search and e-mail marketing

Read the whole story at Adweek »