Americans may have tightened budgets last year, but U.S. consumers spent more time playing games.
In fact, comScore research shows that online game activity jumped 42% last month as
consumers opted for more leisure time at home. Online gaming rose 27% from December 2007 to 86 million unique users in December 2008, compared with the previous year.
Those games attracted
plenty of eyeballs to display ads. From November 2007 to November 2008, the total number of display ads viewed in online gaming rose 29% to 8.6 billion. The increase is due to the 30% uptick in the
number of visitors to sites, while the average person's frequency of exposure has remained relatively constant at 127 ad views per person.--Laurie Sullivan