Advergame Over

from the who-needs-it? dept

Fortune is taking a look at the growing popularity of "advergaming" and isn't very impressed. Advergaming is the practice of creating some sort of online game or puzzle that is somehow related (by sponsorship, prizes, or name recognition) to some sort of product. It sounds like it might be a reasonable idea - play a game, get some brand recognition and/or demographic info. However, Fortune finds that, in practice, it isn't so simple. When games require demographic info, the info that each person has to give isn't very useful to the marketer, so it's questionable why they even bother. For the regular "games", they found that, basically, the games suck. They're focused too much on the branding/advertisement aspect, with very little attention paid to the actual game. Why would people waste their time with a crappy game, when they need to first give up demographic info and deal with overwhelming product placement. It seems a little too much. Finally, he points out that most of the games that involve "instant prizes" lead to the player (in this case, himself) losing the game - which doesn't lead to the most positive branding experience.