Not only has it infiltrated the lives of millions and filled hour upon hour with missions to defeat enemies, race cars, play fake guitars, and even whack penguins as far away as possible, but now the online gaming industry has also opened up a new frontier for marketers: in-game advertising.
Who hasn’t become transfixed with a video game, trying for hours to get to the next level, crack a mission, or even harvest some vegetables? (Hello, FarmVille fans.) In-game advertising takes traditional advertising and tweaks it to fit these hugely engrossing platforms, so a gamer can play tennis in a life-like stadium complete with billboards, or play a football match as his favorite player, complete with the Adidas trainers that player endorses in the real world. If there’s a better place to find a captive audience, marketers have yet to find it.
Massive Incorporated, an in-game advertising company and wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft, estimates global in-game advertising spend will reach $1.8 billion by 2010. The target audience for in-game advertising is the ever elusive 18 to 34 year old male audience, who watch less and less television but spend more and more time playing online.
And while it’s still uncharted territory for some, other marketers have entered the gaming world, guns blazing. The Middle Eastern online gaming industry is now set to grow exponentially over the next few years, thanks largely to steps taken to ensure the proper infrastructure is laid down, and that education takes a more prominent role in developing local talent (see part 1 of cover story). This is a world with plenty of marketing potential, but with regionally developed games themselves only just beginning to see the light, in-game advertising remains nascent in the Middle East.
CONTROLLABLE CAMPAIGNS. “In-game advertising came about as a viable option the moment that gaming consoles and PC and online gaming became the norm,” says Dimitri Metaxas, regional executive director of digital at OmnicomMediaGroup. “The reason for that is that they have an Internet connection, which allows us to move from what was a static environment to a very dynamic, campaign controllable environment.”
In-game advertising has actually been done since the time of the Commodore 64 (JetPack, anyone?), a time when it required an enormous amount of investment to hardcode messages into games, according to Metaxas.
Today, technological developments and the rise of online gaming has turned in-game advertising into an intelligent form of advertising. From product placement to billboards, brand tie-ups to virtual purchases and full-fledged campaigns, Metaxas says in-game advertising is a strong, flexible medium. “We can adapt, change, modify, and rotate advertising messages based on campaign timelines, the different markets and countries we’re targeting, and which particular gamers we’re trying to reach,” he says.
Dubai-based Tahadi Games CEO Steve Tsao says their first venture into in-game advertising came in the form of a campaign with CompuME [electronics retailer], through their recently localized version of the Korean massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG), Ragnarok. “There were hundreds of characters in the game in one trade market, and you can see twenty or thirty of them wearing CompuME helmets,” explains Tsao. “[Having the CompuME helmet] gave a specific ability in both the in-game campaign, and the chance to win prizes in the off-game raffle. It ran during Ramadan, and we thought that was a pretty effective campaign.”
Tsao says that in-game advertising allows marketers to do things they couldn’t do with traditional advertising. “If a game is associated with a computer chip for example, your character could become more powerful if it acquires that chip,” says Tsao. “If you’re associated with a hard drive company, it could give your character more inventory space or bag space. If you’re associated with a soft drink or foods company, the product can heal your character or give it a boost of energy.”
YOUNG GUNNING. Saudi telecommunications operator Mobily was the first regional company to use in-game advertising. “We started running our ads inside games in 2008 for a promotion for our youth proposition ‘fallah’ [prepaid package],” says Ali Al Khalil, executive manager of e-marketing at Mobily. “We were seeking a creative medium to target the youth segment in Saudi Arabia. The campaign went beyond expectations, and the reviews and feedback on Saudi blogs and forums were enormous, so we decided to allocate more budget to it and make it an ongoing media activity.” The advertising was present in console games such as Need for Speed Pro-Street, Skateboarding, and Pro Evolution Soccer.
Ahmad Jadallah, technical manager at Vertex Studios in Dubai, says that since online games tend to be free, revenue is generated from advertising, but that in-game advertisers should be wary of irritating gamers. “Advertisements work when they are not intrusive, and when they don’t have to be in your face,” he says. “So we have to try to integrate it and make it targeted to the aspirations of our audience. It goes beyond just showing the right ads to the right person; you need marketing messages that are created specifically for those targeted audience. Basically, when you’re creating an ad for a teenager in the US, it’s going to be very different than for someone in Dubai.”
Metaxas says that getting an indication of who’s playing what game is of prime importance when considering in-game advertising. “You might need to invest your own money into finding out what is the profile of these people and dig deeper,” he says. “Research has indicated that it’s a lot wider spread than people often think; a lot more women across a wide age range in Saudi Arabia are playing games, which is quite surprising. Games have adapted now, and there’s a type of game for most out there.”
There has in fact been a rise in casual gaming – simple Web or flash-based games, such as FarmVille – that appeal to varied audiences, which Jadallah says are designed to get non-typical gamers such as housewives to look at games and participate with their kids or husbands or sons.
BEYOND BILLBOARDS. Rather than product placement and billboards within games, marketers are also becoming savvier and using less invasive ways to advertise. Metaxas uses the example of the upcoming FIFA 2010 game. “I heard that the footballers in the game, who are real life footballers, will be wearing the actual boots they endorse in real life. To me, that’s very subtle; brand effects come from characters people want to emulate. So if Lionel Messi is wearing Adidas [he is the brand spokesman], people notice that.”
The strengths of in-game advertising lie in the audiences it captivates, and its novelty; the in-game landscape isn’t cluttered with advertising – yet. Metaxas says that in-game advertising will never replace mass media, but that it’s an interesting medium to invest in, to reach the demographics which marketers are finding difficult to reach through mass media.
Ed Bartlett, vice-president Europe of IGA Worldwide, an in-game advertising company, says that “by any criteria” in-game advertising has been one of the ad media success stories of the past three years.
“The medium manages to deliver a unique combination of highly desirable things,” says Bartlett. “An affluent and influential audience, a premium entertainment environment consumed from the living room, brand image, and awareness-building creative opportunities. We have run several campaigns for a number of large brands in the Middle East, however the market is still very much in the test and learn phase.”
With close to 50 million Internet users in the Middle East and a massive youth population, marketers may have to come out and play with this massive captive audience.