• by Margaret A. Starvish , October 1, 2007

Success in online gaming calls for a whole different kind of creative

Remember Kool Aid Man? Released in 1983 for the Atari 2600, this early example of a marriage between advertising and video gaming featured the pitcher of sugary goodness fighting a battle against evildoer Thirsties from sucking up his eponymous beverage -- presumably saving the world's children from a bleak future in which they'd be forced to quench their thirst with inferior drinks. Though the cause was noble, the graphics were clunky and the ROI pretty darn hard to measure.

Ads in games have evolved considerably since those early days.

Looking to reach hardcore console gamers? You can buy billboard space on a virtual ball field on a campaign basis.

If you want to step outside the 18- to 34-year-old male demographic, try a 15-second interstitial ad on Bejeweled, a casual game that's hugely popular with women 35 and over.

"You have all these factors converging - the expansion of the gaming audience to a wider demographic pool, the emergence of a much greater sophistication in ads," comments Paul Verna, a senior analyst with eMarketer. What's more, he says, companies are now developing tools to communicate metrics back to brand marketers.

But despite all the options, some experts say marketers are squandering opportunities, placing the wrong ads in the wrong games. Ian Bogost, a video game researcher, critic, and designer, argues in his new book, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Video Games, that agencies are completely missing the mark when it comes to attracting gamers, in part because they're trying to make traditional buys in a nontraditional space and in part because they don't understand gamers. "You can't sell pharma in World of Warcraft," Bogost says. "Advertisers have a very unsophisticated view of how gamers and game developers see their medium."

Shelby Cox, senior director of in-game advertising at Electronic Arts, adds that it's crucial that marketers use different creative work in games than in traditional ad campaigns.

Targeting Reaps Rewards

Experts also say that techniques for reaching gamers differ depending on whether the group being targeted is considered "casual" (usually women, ages 35-65) or "online console" (hardcore males, 18-34).

Of the several types of gamers, casual ones are considered the easiest to reach. "You're almost better off letting hardcore gamers snub you so you can reach 15 times the mass," says emerging media consultant Kirk Drummond.

What sort of product appeals to this predominantly female audience? One marketer has had success with a campaign for mold-resistant drywall - which is favored by mothers of children with allergies. For that effort, PopCap Games featured pre-roll ads for Georgia-Pacific's version of the construction material.

The ad, which runs for 15 seconds on PopCap's online games - has an average click-through rate of 2.5 percent. "The pre-roll to the Web game is our most successful unit," says Ellen Marett, advertising director for PopCap Games. "I never thought about women shopping for drywall."

The success of this particular ad may also be due in part to its fear factor - it features an ominous image of a blooming colony of mold inside a wall - a picture sure to strike fear in the heart of any mother with a sneezy two-year-old. Clicking on the ad takes users to a site headlined "Stop Feeding Mold" which promotes Georgia-Pacific's paperless drywall.

Mirroring TV

A new type of emerging gamer, "advanced casual," occupies a middle ground between the casual and retail gaming worlds. An advanced casual game offers the accessibility of Web-based casual games - the games are free and anyone who's online can play - but they have the look and feel of a console-based game.

The people playing Power Football, a multiplayer sports game from Power Challenge, are representative of a hardcore gamer audience - mostly men between the ages of 17 and 26, and just the demographic the United States Army was looking to target. "We mirrored their 'Army Strong' television campaign with half-time video, basically the same ad they were running on major networks," says Chris Mate, vice president of business development at Power Challenge. The Army's buy on the site also included branded team uniforms, a midfield watermark, and stadium signage, with most of the signage designed to reinforce visits to an Army Strong-branded URL.

Enhancing the Halo Effect

Creating an effective impression in a hardcore gaming environment used to mean many months spent hard-coding a product into a game. While static advertising is still a viable and desirable option for many brands, the advent of dynamic advertising - stadium signage in sports games and billboards in a first-person shooter - has given advertisers the opportunity to make campaign-based media buys. It also gives them a lot more flexibility in reaching an audience that's much more immersed in play than the casual gamer.

What's more, what that gamer views while playing sticks with him. "Brands are seeing a halo effect of being in the game," says Alison Lange, marketing director for Massive. "Gamers who see the brand in the ad have a high recall of the ad. They have interest in recommending the brand." In fact, a recent study conducted by Nielsen Entertainment on behalf of Massive found brand familiarity among a test group of 600 players exposed to in-game ads increased by an average of 64 percent.

Relevance matters more to this audience than to any other group. "This is not a space where you can force things," says Dario Raciti, gaming leader for OMD Digital. "You have to really keep in mind the consumer experience and only pursue it if you think you can enhance that in some way."

That enhancement might mean an automobile manufacturer offering free virtual cars to players of racing games, or brewing companies sponsoring sports games in virtual reality the same way they'd sponsor a Sunday afternoon football game. T-Mobile had a presence in EA's street racing game, Need For Speed Carbon. Along with dynamic ads like branded storefronts, billboards and bus-stop signage, their buy included a hard-coded element - when players of the game want to contact each other, they do so using a T-Mobile branded device on the car's dashboard.

"The main integration point was the communication device," says Shelby Cox, senior director of in-game advertising at Electronic Arts. "And for this particular game," Cox adds, "it was parlayed perfectly."