• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, July 2, 2008

As part of its effort to build lucrative niche audiences, AOL today is unveiling BigDownload.com, a free video game download site aimed at PC gaming enthusiasts.

Developed by AOL Games and sister company Weblogs Inc., BigDownload at launch will offer more than 400 game downloads, game trailers and demos, as well as game-related news and reviews from Weblogs' Joystiq.com blog.

While AOL already offers a download service through its GameDaily site, the idea is to offer a more in-depth experience for serious gamers with the new gaming property. "BigDownload gives us the opportunity to go super-niche with PC gaming," said Barbara Dybwad, senior producer at Weblogs.

While GameDaily focuses on the top 25 games releases during the year, "we're going to go way beyond that to cover any of the titles that are going to be released in the space," Dybwad said. The site will add about 50 to 100 new games a month, including "indie" titles distributed directly by developers, she said.

That type of narrow targeting is part of AOL's broader strategy to create scores of specialized sites to draw increasingly fragmented Web audiences and boost ad revenues. Other new or revamped niche sites recently launched by AOL include The Boom Box for hip hop and R&B, ParentDish for Parents and The Boot for country music. AOL plans to add another 20 to 30 highly targeted sites this year.

BigDownload follows the blueprint. While cutting development costs by repackaging content and services from the Joystiq and GameDaily, the new site is designed to appeal to advertisers by drawing a target audience of tech-savvy males ages 18 to 34.

In addition to standard display units and sponsored text links, BigDownload is also planning to offer custom sponsorships around site features such as the download "button" as well as home page roadblock ads for a given campaign. Current advertisers on the site include LendingTree.com, Lexus, Subaru and Kroger.

"We're not trying to bring in anyone for free and spring a subscription model on them," Dybwad said. "This is driven by an ad model."

The AOL Games portal had 8.3 million unique visitors in May--up 32% from 6.3 million a year ago, according to comScore Media Metrix. But that total was still well below the 18.3 million of category leader Yahoo Games.