• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 11, 2008

Goodhousekeeping.com and RedbookMag.com have redesigned game areas on their respective sites and launched social media features including popularity rankings, reviews and an "Email a Friend" tab that encourages readers to build communities with friends. Casual game developer Arkadium tailored the areas on the sites for Hearst Magazine.

Advertisers that place CPM and banner ads in the game areas of Goodhousekeeping.com and RedbookMag.com can customize branded advergames within each game arena. About eight of Hearst's 23 Web sites and nine mobile sites offer games.

Hearst will continue to work on giving consumers access to games on mobile sites too, said Chris Johnson, VP of content and business development at Hearst Digital Media. "Casual gaming is a trend," he said. "People like to take a break for five or 10 minutes and come back to whatever they were doing before."

The formula, Johnson said, is to give consumers a great experience, get them to spend more time on the sites and return more often, and bring advertisers into the mix. The scenario makes gaming important to Hearst. After all, someone who engages with a page on the site for 8, 10, 12 minutes or longer tends to give their time, attention and focus to the experience," he said.

Games were added to Goodhousekeeping.com and RedbookMag.com after Seventeen's Web site experienced success in its new gaming area, turning out better-than-expected results. Preliminary numbers show that average page views increased by nearly 50% per visit and time spent increased from 8 minutes and 20 seconds, to 12 minutes and 16 seconds.

Tampax, Clearasil and Coty are among the advertisers taking advantage of these new custom digital areas of the sites by launching branded advergames online at Seventeen and Cosmogirl. Tied to a Seventeen advertorial, last month Tampax launched a girls' sports-themed memory game on Seventeen.com. Clearasil just launched a branded version of the popular Zitz game on CosmoGirl.com.

The success has prompted Hearst to roll out loyalty programs and community elements to the rest of their popular publication properties online over the next months tied to other design enhancements and improvements.