Youniversal Branding: in-games advertising and online communities

A superb and comprehensive report from trendwatching on opportunities available for brand in games and virtual worlds. There are several case studies mentioned but I will just highlight some numbers here:

• More than 100 million people worldwide log on every month to play interactive computer games (source: NYT, December 2005).
• Gaming is, for gamers, the third-most-popular use of media entertainment in the last week, after watching TV (96%) and listening to music (94%) (source: Mediaedge:cia, December 2005).
• In 2005, advertisers spent approximately $56M placing ads in video games, up from $34 in 2004.
• In-game advertising results in a 60 percent increase in awareness for a new product and animated 3-D ads achieve twice the recall of static billboards (Nielsen Interactive Entertainment)

Tags: games, advertising, online communities, virtual worlds, trendwatching