Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Video Game Advertising

In my first post, I spoke about how much the advertising industry is changing, and what it means for Boston Advertising Agencies. Today I thought I would discuss a direct result of the change and how companies are starting to adapt to it: video game advertising.

Video game advertising is simply using computer and video games as a medium to deliver advertising. What’s so great about it is that it allows Boston Advertising Agencies to reach a typically difficult to reach demographic: young affluent males ages 18-34. Video games have the 4th highest reach for teens and heavy gamers (following TV, internet and radio), and a recent article published by cnn.com stated that 97% of America’s youth play video games in some form.
What this all means for Boston Advertising Agencies is huge market potential. The video game industry itself is booming, with global sales rising from $6.6 billion last year to %14.4 billion by 2012. There is just so much opportunity here, it’s amazing.

New forms of in game advertising allow Boston Advertising Agencies to tailor their message to geographic location, and to time zone, allowing for the delivery of time sensitive messages (like a movie launch). Information can also be sent back to the agency from the player’s machine to help evaluate how effective the advertisement placement is for the viewer.

The market is growing at an unprecedented rate, and is presenting a huge amount of opportunity to be taken advantage of by Boston Advertising Agencies. The potential here is amazing, and it will not be long before agencies start popping up that specialize in solely this form of advertising. It is definitely an industry that should be watched and paid very close attention to, and taken advantage of sooner rather than later.

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