What Ever Happened to Advergaming?

Whenever people talk about viral marketing, I always think back to the time I first heard the term, advergaming. It was 2002 and I was attending an IT Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) conference. One of the keynote speakers was a dynamic young marketer named Keith Ferrazzi. Mr. Ferrazzi was CEO of Ya Ya, LLC., a new company that was bringing marketing and gaming together in a whole new way. He told the story about this great new way to create brand exposure by developing games that enabled the consumer to both learn about a product while being entertained. He made a great a great case for this new media, and I was intrigued.

I’ll admit it, I’m no gamer. I’m either getting the snot knocked out of me by my 10 year-old in Wii Boxing or helplessly crashing my snow speeder into the ground, unable to save the Rebel Force from the Republic’s menacing AT-ATs in one of the many Star Wars games I also suck at.

But the mixture of adverting and video games is big business. And it has grown substantially since my first exposure to it in 2002. According to PQ Media, spending on advergaming in 2007 grew nearly 35% to $217 million.

For anyone not familiar with advergaming, I came across a pretty good explanation by Lee Ann Orbringer titled, How Advergaming Works. Essentially, advergaming mixes advertising with video games to create an experience that exposes the player to a brand within the context of a game. It is reported to date back to the 1980’s when it was first used by Kool-Aid and Pepsi to promote their products with games for the Atari 2600. However, New Jersey-based Skyworks Technologies claims to have pioneered advergaming through the creation of the first “portal” in 1996: the Lifesavers CandyStand. Candystand, now known as Wrigley’s Candystand, is teeming with all sorts of games and is a great example of how this type of new media has grown. And Sykworks has done a great job of creating games targeted at specific audience demographics.

But advergaming is not just for kids. Back in September 2004, an article by Jack Gordan in Electronic Retailer Magazine talked about how companies like Chrysler, Totoyta, and even the TV Series C.S.I. were all interjecting there brands into games for the Xbox and Xbox live service. And Sykworks has done a great job of creating games targeted at specific audience demographics, such as adult male and female audiences.

And advergaming is not going away. In his article, Top 10 things NOT to do in advergaming, author John O’Green cites a Gartner research study that notes by 2010, as many as 20 percent of tier-one retailers will have a some form of marketing presence in online games and virtual worlds. For any marketer considering this form of IMC, Mr. O’Green has some great advice about the importance of planning and expectations if using and advergaming strategy.

Gone are the days of reading the back of the cereal box during breakfast. Now it’s hearing, “Dad, can I go to postpopia.com and play the game I just saw?” As a marketer, I think, wow, what a great use of technology. As a father, I’m a little torn by another way to keep my child glued to the computer screen. But for adults, well, we need all the practice we can get. So what does a little brand exposure hurt while playing a fun game of Skywork’s Hole in One Shootout!

For me, I guess it is back to the Wii Boxing and another workout trying to keep myself from getting knocked around by my 10 year-old.