Next month will see the first ever European Advertising in Games forum, following similar events in the States. As the press release states:
"The agenda brings together all sides of the rapidly growing advertising in games market - technologists, developers, ad agencies, brands and publishers - to examine the emergence of video games as the next big advertising medium and discuss technologies in development to make rich, dynamic in-game advertising and branded content a reality."
Reading through the specifics of the agenda, two interesting factors emerge. First, dynamic advertising - i.e. the ability to download ads into a game while the user is playing, thereby keeping the content up-to-date and specifically targeted - is very much viewed as the future of the medium. This makes sense with today's broadband/ Wi-Fi enabled consoles, but will gamers be happy for what seems suspiciously like Spyware to be hijacking their connection?
Also, this sentence is intriguing:
"The panel will examine the role that advertising will play in developing and funding the next generation of games and how to manage the ad agency/game developer relationship."
With costs of producing games likely to sky-rocket in the Next Gen era this sounds like the perfect way to meet those spiralling budgets. The worry is, if large corporations do start to fund games in this way, how long before they're censoring content? How long before fast food giants and global supermarket chains are saying, "We'll give you $5 million to develop Doom 5, but, hey, we can't have all that violence, our shareholders won't approve and it contravenes our passionate support of family values..."
Anyway, the press release comes with a whole bundle of interesting little facts about videogames in today's society, which I've pasted below.
With 250 million computer and video game units sold in 2004, and over $25 billion in revenues, the electronic gaming sector is now the fastest growing sector in the entertainment industry.
The average age of a console game is now 29, with an above-average education and income. It's no longer about kids in their bedrooms, games are taking media time and awareness directly from TV viewership.
In 2004, TV viewership declined by 12% in the target group of males 18-34 years old while, at the same time, this group spent 20% more time playing games. Nielsen
The fastest growing media segments in 2006 will be video game advertising (40%), online advertising (27%), movie screen advertising (25%), branded entertainment (18%), local/regional cable television (12.8%) and custom publishing (10%), whereas TV ad spend will actually decline. Jack Myers Media Business Report
3/4 of households with a male age 8-34 own at least one videogames console. Nielsen
Independent tests by companies such as Nielsen Entertainment show that recall of ads in games is as high as 60% thanks to the immersive and interactive game environments they are placed in.
