Another recent example of EA's marketing approach under Harz's leadership was the Toyota Prius in Sims 3. Those of you who attended E3 may have noticed the Sims 3 branded Prius parked inside South Hall. The partnership with Toyota enabled Sims 3 players to download a Prius in the game, which she said got a very positive reaction. EA also worked with McDonald's on the fast food chain's new McCafe drinks. EA leveraged its Pogo casual games portal to have McDonald's offer triple token Tuesdays during every Tuesday in May, so players were able to get three times the benefits but awareness for McCafe was also raised. “So wherever we do these executions, whether in-game, around-game or online, it's really about bringing added value,” Harz emphasized again. “We're working with partners to make sure they understand gameplay so that when we do something, it's actually valuable.”
In order for the in-game advertising industry to grow, not only will publishers need to engage in partnerships that are actually perceived as additive to gamers, but a standardized system for metrics will also be necessary. To that end, Harz recently got EA to be more involved with IAB over the past year. The IAB recently unveiled its guidelines for standardized metrics and Harz recognizes that work still needs to be done to make it easier for brands to participate in dynamic in-game advertising. “We need to help marketers better understand the value [in games],” she noted.
IndustryGamers has been hearing about the potential of in-game advertising for a long time now, but we're waiting to see it take off. Up until this point, the growth has been very slow. Screen Digest recently said the market would be worth over $1 billion worldwide by 2014, and studies from other market research firms have generated similar projections. And $1 billion spent on ads in games in 2014 would only represent about 1.5% of the global ad budget that year. Considering that the global games industry is already worth $45 billion, that figure seems incredibly low. Nevertheless, Harz remains quite optimistic.
“The trajectory is undeniable and we're beginning to feel that. Even with the difficult economy – finance and automotive were especially hard hit – we're still seeing investments and new brands coming online, and multimillion deals like our Dr Pepper example. I think what this recession has done for marketing is forced people to be incredibly efficient on where they spend, and what media they choose; they need to be very surgical about what they do,” she remarked. “Despite the difficult economy we're already seeing an increase. We saw a 50% increase year-over-year in our advertising business, which encompasses everything from casual to dynamic to fixed placements in our games. You'd be hard pressed right now to find many heads of media sales talking about 50% year-over-year growth, so we're very excited about this. "
1 Comments
July 1, 2009
Elizabeth Harz certainly does look excited in that picture. She should get an award for that smile and the radiating feeling of *excitement* coming out of that picture.