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The Blog of In-Game Advertising

by Darren Herman
Wednesday, November 24, 2004. 10:42AM
1,578 Views 9 Comments

I've known Marc for quite some time, working with him a few years back on a couple of music ventures to recently, helping out with marketing/strategy support for a few new ideas. Until recently, I was highly involved in the music scene, specifically from the management/booking/label side. I left the music scene (although maintaining ties with 2 bands) to venture into in-game advertising. Yes, video games.

I setup a company named inGamePartners LLC, based in Manhattan, NY that takes brands, large and small, and places them strategically into video games. The video games can be one of 4 types:

1. Retail PC based games (playable on your computer) 2. Retail console games (playable on Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, etc) 3. Mobile games (playable on your cellphones) 4. Advergames (light games that are developed for brand messaging, purposes)

So far, we've done campaigns for GE, SpikeTV, Citrix Online, Columbia Records, Sony (imprint record labels), Corsair, Ziff Davis, and a bunch of other clients. We are constantly looking to bring more clients into this space and work with them to develop their strategy.

If you didn't know, there are over 500 million gamers worldwide, that are beautifully untouched to advertising. We can make this happen - our technology can serve ads to a large percentage of these users, inside the game they are actually playing. When we sit down with most agencies, they first say that they do not represent any computer companies or game companies so this whole method of advertising doesn't make sense for them....we say, "do gamers only buy computers and games?" They must buy clothes, eat, entertain, make purchases, etc...right?

Here are some stats to leave you with:

40% of gamers are female average age of a gamer is 29 17% of gamers are over the age of 55

Giddy up. Would love to know your feedback on the gaming world and specifically, in-game advertising.

Darren Herman 914.912.7992 or 800.548.1388 x2 darren@ingameads.com

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Comments

 9 shown
Monday, August 14, 2006. 06:52PM by Francisco De La Torre
At the agency where I work, (www.petrolad.com) we are carefully watching this market. We are in the middle of working with 100 games....Good article. :)
Wednesday, June 21, 2006. 05:33PM by Mike M
I've been an avid gamer for a good couple of years, and I'm actually admin on one of the thousands of servers out there dedicated to Half-Life mod games...the market is wide open on this. Good going and good luck.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005. 06:11PM by Darren Herman
17% of gamers are over the age of 55. Just thought I'd throw that in.... ;)
Wednesday, January 26, 2005. 06:02PM by Kim S
Very interesting. My 42 year-old husband is an avid gamer, what's the stats on men in his age bracket? It's also interesting that very recently, it seems, advertising is taking on the look and feel of video games. I think I saw a commercial for some kind of health insurance done this way. Maybe your biz could do the reverse and have game placement in car ads? Ala - the TV in the SUV? Good stuff.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005. 11:12PM by Kevin Mullett
Darren, Great post. Planning to get in touch with you as I am very active in the LAN party / even community. I spoke at last years Quakecon, consult with LAN hosts, and run both http://www.lanpartycoalition.com and http://www.lanpartynetwork.com. I have worked with a lot of sponsors over the years regarding this market, and it just amazes me how many of them don't get it. Thanks for a good post. I look forward to getting in touch with you.
Thursday, January 13, 2005. 12:07PM by Kevin Glennon
I love this topic. I too think it's odd that not just clients, but even big media minds think in-game advertising only works for "computer and game clients." If you're interested in seeing what I think of as the B-side of in-game advertising, check out: http://www.kevinglennon.com/ar... -- it was a direct response to someone saying why most products won't be well-served by in-game advertising (to which I obviously disagreed).
Saturday, November 27, 2004. 12:06PM by noreen sullivan
I have always thought there should be product placement in game. There is some with cars...you can race a toyota or a mustang and such. But the idea that you could tie your world from the game into the world of your everyday life would be great. The ability to be someone else is part of the attraction to take a little of that boost into life.
Saturday, November 27, 2004. 08:48AM by Mary Crosse
I was at a dinner party on Thanksgiving, and these stats came up. There was a wide age range in the group, the youngest being 21. The older group was only in their late 20's and female, but they felt that people 3 years younger than them were much more involved with video games than their age group. I guess they didn't see as many people lock themselves in their dormrooms for 3 days straight for video game marathons like the 21 year old or I did. But it is interesting that they are the average age of gamers, but didnt feel like they or most people their age were in that market at all. Anyway, I've always been fascinated with video game marketing. Did you see the Volvo video game commercial that's been running? Fellow adhole Dan Freid was the producer on it. Volvo paid to be a car in a racing game that just came out, and then they made a commercial that a video game company designed of the volvo car going crazy on the race tracks, flipping over and jumping bridges, with the driver coming out at the end without a bruise. i like the commerical because it looks so cool, but also because it makes a volvo look cool and safe at the same time. Dan can probably elaborate on the production process.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004. 11:54AM by Marc Lefton
Hey Darren. Great stuff. I'll be in touch soon, things have been crazy with launching this site.

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