KCB201: In-game ads

The `gamer` demographic is right in the "advertising sweet-spot", according to this article/survey by comScore.

A couple of days ago, I commented on Courtney's blog, Arbitraty Culture, in response to her post about the future of advertising. I added a link to an article which explains how advertising could be seen in Grand Theft Auto.

Well, the comScore article illustrated just how seriously advertisers are thinking about marketing to gamers through their games.

Here are some stats:

• gaming websites reached 72m people in April 2005, and 77m people in 2006. That's a serious market and a serious upward trend [note* only 8m people listen to commercial radio per day in Australia, and they listen for 18h a week, heavy gamers can play up to 40h/wk];
• gamers were found to earn more then $75 000/year and are aged between 18 and 35 - there's a demographic to make any advertiser go 'awl gooowey' inside...
• gamers represent a concentrated group of rich, internet-savvy, people - split equally between male and female.

The survey also says gamers aren't necessarily averse to ads in games, and that they wouldn't stop playing a game simply because it had ads in it. I think gamers are the perfect personality - they're geeky - and they would be more than willing to latch on to a slick marketing campaign; buy the matching shirt and pants, collect the figurines, bellybutton ring...

We're no longer safe from advertising!

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photo courest of yougeek