A few stats & facts
- In the US $1 in every $4 spent in entertainment is on games.
- Consumers see value in entertainment, spending 100+ hours per week. Think parents interacting and teaching their kids via video games.
- 75% of Apple’s app revenue comes from gaming. Mobile is the fastest growing area.
- 43% of gamers are women and a third of gamers are parents.
EA Sports
EA Sports “experiences that unite the emotions of sport”. The closest you can get to being one of your heroes is participating in an electronic game as your hero. E.g. Being Tiger Woods and winning the Ryder Cup (coming out next year).
For FIFA 2011, player images will be photo-like. EA have also created personalities in the players. So players on screen will start to play just like they do in real life e.g. a shorter player might have greater speed/acceleration and when the players interact, they will respond like they would in real life.
Time spent on the FIFA platform is 36 million game sessions = 217 million minutes = 414 years (as an aside Tristan hates these numbers… “they don’t mean anything he says”, I agree…. The gamer is engaged in the ‘experience’ not the brand in the background.)
How EA is selling in-game advertising onto brands
EA = Experience Affinity
- Top entertainment
- Relevant reach
- Engaged audiences
- Integration expertise
It seems most brands (Dr Pepper, Unilever, Doritos) all use the platform as a means for giving consumers access to exclusive content or a deeper engagement/more positive experience than they would get through purchasing the product alone. It is a means for adding value to an audience who has common interests in the advertising brand and gaming.
The case of Renault & SIMs
Renault is overcoming the challenge of ‘young people not buying new cars’ by integrating into SIMs. They’ve experienced 250,000 downloads of Twizy ZE to date and over 8,000 comments about the partnership on European blogs etc. It is teaching gamers (and younger generations) about electric cars as well as improves the user’s SIMs experience.
Renault has used the integration to learn a lot about their customers and build their database. They say that being pushed out of their comfort zone has helped them learn how to sell better and recognize bigger opportunities.
Measurement
EA games now has a partnership with Nielsen allowing brands to measure interactions and purchase lift in households exposed to interactive advertising.
The measurement will be comparable to other channels and will plug into people meter-style facility.
My opinion….
Still not convinced. Its all very interesting and certainly ticks the boxes on reaching a very passionate audience but at the end of the day, its still just a very passionate, segment of the entire potential population.
This is a channel that needs to be considered right from the outset and at the point of content and creative development.
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