While traditional advertising media is losing its effectiveness, new opportunities, such as video games, are presenting themselves to advertisers. The industry estimates that only about 2 per cent of free trial download are converted into purchases. So, as a result, companies are mixing more advertising into their free versions. Network providers like Atom and Wild Tangent sell 15-second pre-roll video ads that appear before games load. RealNetworks displays ads during downloading and at regular interval during game play.

For advertisers the main benefit of investing in casual game ads is the diversity of the audience. A recent study by Consumer Electronics Association reports that 65 per cent of women between age 25 and 34 play games in contrast to 35 per cent of men in the same age group. According to Dave Madden, executive vice president, Wild Tangent, women over 35 are the company’s most loyal user base but advertisers haven’t taken full advantage of this untapped opportunity.

Would you like your brand to offer an engaging gaming experience to users? Advergames is another ideal vehicle in developing brand user experiences that could keep users happily engaged with products and brands for hours at a time. Consider a game developed for M&M by Blockdot, hard to believe but, it was played 60 million times for a total of 25 million hours!

The marketing opportunities are almost as limitless as the games themselves. The smart marketer will be the one taking advantage of this emerging opportunities and not waiting to see what the other guy will do.

Resources: CNN, MediaPost