Is your consumer playing with your product? They can be – with an advergame! Great advergames integrate products or brand attributes as part of game play, much like product placement in films.
By creating a way to play with your product, whether acne medicine, motor oil, a candy bar or an even less likely plaything, advergames create new marketing opportunities. Advergames let you create a way to engage your customers' complete concentration. With advergames, customers immerse themselves in an interactive, branded experience. Customers interact with your product or brand without feeling like they have been subjected to a commercial pitch.
These are just some of the reasons advergames keep growing in their popularity. The list of advantages to including advergames in your Internet marketing strategy goes on.
• ADVERGAMES EXTEND PRODUCT AWARENESS
As noted, most players completely concentrate on game play. Rather than multi-task like they do when using most other media, a customer playing your advergame gives his or her full attention to your product or brand. What's more, since online gamers often spend more than 30 minutes playing an advergame, that full attention is extending well past what customers offer other media. With an advergame, your customer emerges from the extended branding experience with a full awareness of your product or brand.
• ADVERGAMES BUZZ WITH VIRAL APPEAL
Awareness also spreads through the buzz created by an advergame's viral appeal. That makes them a perfect component in an Internet strategy that includes word of mouth marketing. Users invite friends to beat their score, which can appear for all to see on high score tables. Or, they challenge others to play with them in multi-player games. These challenges can be a very effective recruitment tool. Research shows that more than 90 percent of those who receive an email challenge to play a game respond to the challenger.
• ADVERGAMES CAPTURE DATA CAPTURE
Advergames enjoy a click-through rate that permits data capture that is the envy of other Internet marketing tactics. In fact click-throughs on advergames can exceed 300 percent. And, when it comes to data capture, advergames routinely motivate more than 55 percent of online gamers to volunteer contact data. In addition to just capturing that data, those same gamers opt-in to hear more from a brand.
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ADVERGAMES APPEAL TO VIRTUALLY ALL DEMOGRAPHICS
It's time to correct the misconception that online games only appeal to teen-age boys or that advergames are only appropriate for products that appeal to that demographic. The actual demographics of gamers hold some surprises. More women ages 18 and older play games than boys ages six through 17, for example. Even more significant for Internet marketing, the most avid gamers these days are young men and middle-aged women. Clearly, online games can appeal to any demographic. That shows the wisdom of considering an advergame as part of your Internet marketing strategy, no matter your product or who your customer is.
And, advergame innovators are continuing to find new ways to connect with more customers and diverse demographics. By using new techniques to bring your brand into the gaming world, advergame pioneer MS3, for example, is creating what it calls a "surround sound" approach for your Internet marketing campaign. One example of this comprehensive approach is to present
in-game advertising on gaming consoles and in real-time. The result is that your brand is constantly being reinforced and is especially useful with hard-to-reach targets.
Play with MS3
MS3 has been creating advergames since before there was a name for it. Leveraging that experience – and never ceasing to innovate –
MS3 has conceptualized, designed, and created custom online advergames in Shockwave and Flash. We have developed online games to create branded experiences for clients that include
BP/Castrol, Pfizer,
M&M/Mars, JCPenney, Trojan, Arrid, Ponds,
Pepcid,
Imodium, JCPenney, Lorillard, Kraft, Hershey.
Ask us about developing a branded game for your product. And, in the meantime,
play our games.
