14 DAY TRIAL // At the San Francisco-hosted MI6 Conference that tackles issues related to the business side of the videogame industry, one of the more interesting panels (apart from the one that said World of Warcraft was not a success) dealt with the way advertisers are seeing people that play games as one of the most interesting core groups advertising should be targeted at.
Simple math explains why gamers are transitioning from being largely dismissed by the business community to being some of the most interesting demographics. The people that were around 10 years old in the early '90s, when videogames began making a significant impact and attracting a clear audience, are now in their late 20s, quickly heading towards 30. Chances are they have a family and earn a decent amount of money. They might have less time to play games, with family and work taking up most of their attention, but they surely do have more money to spend. And where's money to be spent, advertising soon follows. Most statistics say that the average player's age is 33 and has been gaming for the past 12 years, so marketers need to target this potential market.
The issue is that most gamers are not very easily reached by the classic advertising efforts. Billboards and road advertising are easily passed by when you are fiddling with your MP3 player on the way to work, web advertising attracts less and less click-throughs each year and television as a medium is largely ignored by the people that fit the "gamer" or even "casual gamer" profile.
Matt Story, who is director of Play, a division of media and advertising at Denuo, commented that: "Gaming has become a lifestyle more than it is just a hobby," so more and more advertisers are beginning to look at games as a medium that could deliver messages to potential customers in an effective way. He said: "Games could have big marketing tie-ins, like General Motors and Transformers. We really think there's an opportunity to bring that to games. Brands like Purina and Oil of Olay are asking how to get involved with games. There's going to need to be people who step out on the ledge and take a chance on this industry. The 'Wild West' of games needs navigators."
The conclusion that games can make an excellent advertising medium is one of the clearest motives behind the recent string of deals regarding advertising in games, like the one between Electronic Arts and Massive or the deals that involve Double Fusion. And we're bound to see more of this in the near future.