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综观社交游戏品牌植入模式推动用户品牌意识增长

发布时间:2011-04-22 17:34:41 Tags:,,

社交游戏带给广告商无限品牌植入机会,但是现实真如他们所愿吗?本篇分析着重阐述当今品牌公司同社交游戏之间的整合。

微软和EA之类的公司开始减少游戏内置广告,这是因为玩家不希望体验游戏的时候受推销干扰。很多玩家愿意为某些MMO游戏支付50美元的费用,就是为了免受广告干扰。虽然如此,现判定内置广告注定消亡还为时尚早。除了内置广告,品牌公司还有其他各式内置途径,这取决不同的创造性方案。但就品牌整合来说,掌机游戏并非唯一可供品牌公司挖掘的领域。品牌公司只要能找到合适的搭售方式,社交游戏为其创造的收益将更胜一筹。

farmville blimp

farmville blimp

整合机会

有几种选择方案供意图融入游戏体验的品牌公司选择。他们可以自创或者聘请他人创造广告游戏(游戏邦注:这通常是贴牌定制游戏),但这存在因过度宣传影响游戏品质的风险。所以今天看来,品牌游戏并非理想的品牌植入渠道。另一选择是我们谈到的内置广告;这一方式在2006年开始备受推崇,但在用户中反响平平,因为这种广告植入方式过于温和。无论如何,品牌公司总是希望借助内置广告提高如下参数:

* 品牌记忆

* 品牌推荐

* 品牌情愫

* 购买意向

* 正面反馈

* 广告印象

* 品牌粘性

媒介视角

社交媒介巨头Facebook是品牌公司宣传的风水宝地。在目睹Facebook游戏迅猛增长势头之后,品牌公司开始探索各种同热门游戏开发商合作的途径,但很快他们发现付费整合是最简单的植入方式,而且只需承担极小的风险就可以参与到社交网络之中。

随着行业的成熟,品牌公司发现由于用户在游戏体验中极为敏锐和活跃,因此社交游戏的植入方式远不止付费整合。付费公司并不希望自己沦为付款机器,仅仅扮演支付费用的角色。他们希望成为真实游戏体验的组成部分;然而这样的整合方式包含复杂的周期,需要获得许可,同时还得提前规划。

Facebook等平台的社交游戏对于品牌公司来说是最佳的搭售渠道(游戏邦注:这源于游戏的免费属性)。Facebook是个促进社交互动的平台,开发商可以及时优化平台上的游戏,而苹果iOS平台则需要通过既有流程提交应用更新说明。而品牌公司最好的搭售伙伴是娱乐公司,就目标探讨方面而言,他们拥有快速的周转时间,同时还有一定的预测能力。

开发者视角

开发商唯一关注的就是为用户提供丰富的体验。开发商也需要评估机会成本,探索品牌植入游戏的途径,难度超乎之前的内容设计,研究植入方式需要耗费大量的时间。

开发商发现,社交游戏玩家日渐成熟,懂得如何回避各种嵌入广告。玩家登陆Facebook是为了享受真实的游戏体验,维护社交关系,所以这就为广告商带来这样一个问题:“如何将品牌植入目标群体的游戏之中呢?”

对于很多在线游戏来说,广告是个核心的营收方式。社交游戏的出现扭转了这一模式,广告在社交游戏营收的比重不到10%(游戏邦注:社交游戏的主要营收来自于虚拟交易)。此外,付费整合占据大多社交游戏15-35%的营收。虽然贴牌付费整合是营收途径之一,但这其实对于提高营收和推广游戏来说并非明智选择。

当前生态系统

发展至今天,社交游戏的营收途径已不断推陈出新。数据显示,社交游戏的广告开支已从2009年开始增长至60%。公司谋求品牌整合,不仅切实可行并且将受益匪浅。在探究当今的发展态势前,我们先来看看热门社交游戏开发商的品牌整合范例。

Zynga堪称品牌整合的前驱。去年7月份开始,游戏玩家就可以在自己农场种植Cascadian Farm蓝莓。这一品牌宣布活动反响很好,玩家可以选择在农作物上种植贴牌蓝莓,其品牌意识也因此增长了550%。

FrontierVille-Rango

FrontierVille-Rango

PlayFirst的首次品牌植入是在2010年的11月份(游戏邦注:公司在Facebook游戏《Chocolatier: Sweet Society》中嵌入了Charles Chocolates品牌)。这些贴牌商品嵌入游戏设置之中,游戏玩家可以进行交易活动。1周前,CrowdStar携手唱片公司Sparkart推出Bon Jovi搭售组合,包括贴牌虚拟商品、Facebook Credits赠品和Bon Jovi在线商店优惠券。

几周前,Zynga联合Farmers Insurance Group(全美第三大家庭和车辆保险公司)为《Farmville》玩家推出贴牌庄稼保护飞船。目前Zynga已和Nickelodeon/Paramount达成合作关系,在《Frontierville》推广《宠物大冒险》。游戏中玩家只要顺利通过3个Rango关卡,便可获得一座Rango雕像。Zynga还曾协助Sony Pictures Entertainment、Dr. Dre和Universal Studios Home Entertainment在《黑手党战争》中开展品牌宣传活动。CrowdStar在品牌整合中也颇为活跃,其最受关注的当属在《It Girl》中融入Old Navy商店。

itgirl-oldnavy

itgirl-oldnavy

Clorox最近刚将Scoop Away品牌植入Facebook游戏《Happy Pets》当中。活动中,玩家只要通过WildTangent的BrandBoost平台观看Scoop Away视频便可为宠物赢得免费Scoop Away牌猫砂盒。玩家从中获益匪浅,因为Scoop Away牌猫砂盒可以连续七天保持清洁,而普通猫砂盒只能保持24小时。Scoop Away旨在通过这种富有意义关联嵌入方式,让猫砂盒成为游戏玩家的首选。

scoop away

scoop away

创新方案

如果开发商希望扩充游戏的收入来源,就得留心保持体验的真实性,避免不伤害玩家的游戏体验。为此提供解决方案的公司包括WildTangent(游戏邦注:这是一家拥有11年历史的私人公司),公司业务涉猎多个方面,如今专注于帮助社交游戏开发商拓宽游戏营收渠道。WildTangent在游戏加载业务方面成就非凡,即在OEM公司的品牌中融入休闲游戏和MMO游戏。

WildTangent为社交游戏开发商提供了BrandBoost平台,这是个完整的选择性体验。社交游戏开发商可以通过BrandBoost平台以某公司名义向玩家展示付费广告,玩家可以从中获得贴牌虚拟商品。WildTangent使得玩家无需支付虚拟货币,想法为玩家提供贴牌虚拟商品,玩家从中可以获得某些特殊辅助功能,或者提供纯粹起装饰作用的付费虚拟商品。最近CrowdStar的宠物游戏《Happy Pets》同Clorox的植入方案就是由WildTangent策划的。

此外,WildTangent和众多游戏开发商均建立了合作关系,所以它能够为广告商提供2-3甚至更多的优质品牌整合方案。WildTangent如今正于PopCap Games和CrowdStar等公司的作品中实施品牌植入方案,因此未来这些游戏将会出现越来越多的有趣元素。

brandboost

brandboost

所以BrandBoost及SocioPay/SocioPath(游戏邦注:SocioPay和SocioPath均为Hi5推出的平台)之类的解决方案特别之处何在?两家公司存在1大共同之处:Alex St. John。游戏元老Alex St. John曾任职于Wild Tangent多年,现为社交娱乐公司Hi5的首席技术官。这些公司如今均推出广告—商业混合模式,将广告和业务融为一体,且又不影响业务营收。这一模式需要借助广泛分析准确预测用户行为,提供适当的支付选择组合和广告植入方式,从而实现营收最大化。

品牌整合成本

一般来说,广告商会参考广告印象和植入方式来决定媒体购买方案。例如,购买IGN首页的广告位置,每天将获得60万的访问量,而费用则在5-6万美元之间。然而社交游戏的植入机制却大为不同,其游戏植入方式更为深入,因此费用也更为昂贵。DAU和MAU分别为10万和100万的游戏可以为品牌广告带来12.5万至15万的访问量。

品牌植入过程

希望在游戏中开展品牌植入的公司首先就得判断适合的游戏类型。品牌契合乍看似乎很简单,就像食品公司瞄准农场游戏,但其实远比这复杂。品牌公司得考虑用户群体、用户行为、地区文化及其他用户数据。如果公司自身无法获取相关数据,WildTangent之类的公司可以为其选择合适的植入游戏。

一旦开始了最初的协商洽谈之后,品牌公司就得向开发商传递自己的目标和成功参数,从而决定活动的持续周期。开发商可以展开内部讨论,探讨广告商给予的想法和创意是否适合游戏的内容更新,从成本角度考虑,方案是否具有潜力。由于开发商通常提前策划更新和发行内容,因此协商至少要在执行前1-2个月展开,除非这是非常紧急或者自发的活动,例如,品牌公司赞助灾难救援募款。

如果一切都准备就绪,那么就可以开始订立合同,实施整合计划。品牌公司通常通过给予额外奖励的方式赞助虚拟商品,希望以此快速增加用户品牌情愫,并最终形成品牌忠诚度。整合的关键之处是避免出现强制性,提供选择性,为不愿看见品牌植入广告的用户提供出口。另外还有一点很重要,即确保活动维持一定的时间长度,并让整个整合过程凸显珍贵性。

品牌植入未来

Facebook要求所有游戏开发商7月份起统一采用Facebook Credits货币,同时其还特别挑选合作伙伴TrialPay,开发商因此可以采用付费整合方式。但是,这些都是硬性整合,不含任何软性整合。硬性整合就是指开发商需要收集用户数据和个人信息(游戏邦注:在这种整合模式中,用户参与整合的相关信息将会由开发商传递给TrialPay)。而品牌广告则是属于软性整合,开发商无需收集相关用户信息。也就是说,任何软性付费植入方式均可立即获得辨识度,开发商可以根据数据了解整合品牌的日常展示情况,获悉用户的反应。品牌公司和开发商可以利用相关数据共同优化整合方案,为用户提供最佳体验。

未来社交游戏将会大量添加地理定位元素、手机和跨平台功能以及独特的品牌植入方式(即加强品牌赞助和用户体验)。Tap Me推出了有趣的手机解决方案;RadiumOne(游戏邦注:其前称为gWallet)推出了ShareGraph解决方案,帮助品牌公司获取同现实好友交流关乎品牌利益话题的用户。

品牌整合的最佳模式是让玩家未察觉品牌已植入其中,而品牌参数却得到了发展。社交游戏的品牌植入尚处于初级阶段,未来这一领域将会日渐成熟,开发商和品牌合作者都将进一步拓宽自己的营收渠道。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,转载请注明来源:游戏邦)

A Complete Look At How Social Games Increase Brand Awareness (By Up To 550%)

Social gaming presents a myriad of integration opportunities for advertisers, but is the reality living up to the hype? In this analysis we take a look at how brands can begin integrating with social games today. More after the jump.

Companies such as Microsoft and Electronic Arts have begun reducing their efforts towards in-game advertising for retail games, citing the lack of enthusiasm of gamers to being sold to when they are playing games. This makes sense as customers who are paying $50+ for a game and/or subscription fees to play some of these MMOs don’t want to be hassled with ads. With that said, it’s also very premature to extrapolate the death of in-game advertising. Asides from in-game billboards, there are plenty of other in-game opportunities for brands to be involved in depending on the types of creative solutions that can be found. But console gaming isn’t the only frontier for brands to explore when thinking of brand integrations. Social games may yield exponentially more benefits for those brands that can find the right tie-ins.

The Opportunity

Brands looking to be part of the gaming experience have a few options they can pursue. They can create or hire someone to create advergames, which are custom produced branded games, but risk compromising game quality with over-promotion. Hence advergames would not be classified as a successful brand engagement vehicle today. Another option is in-game advertising as we just discussed; an option that gained momentum in 2006 but hasn’t been too favorable in consumers’ eyes because of the blandness of the advertisement injections within these games. Regardless, brands have pursued in-game advertising as a way to seek improvement in the following metrics (examples of which are given in my previous post about in-game advertising):

Brand Recall

Brand Recommendation

Brand Sentiment

Purchase Intent

Positive response to creative

Impressions

Engagement

Media Perspective

The media darling Facebook has always been an enticing avenue for brands to promote themselves. Witnessing the rapid ascension of games on Facebook, brands begun exploring ways to work with popular social game developers for possible integrations, but quickly realized that offers were the easiest place to integrate and had the lowest risk so they simply became part of the network.

As the industry matured, brands realized the kind of engagement social games could drive are beyond what offers can simply do since the players are alert and active during game play. Premium brands don’t want to be seen as an ATM – simply giving away currency for some action. They want to be a part of the actual experience; however such integrations can have complex cycles and require approval and planning in advance.

Social gaming through channels like Facebook can be the best tie-in for brands because of the free-to-play nature of these titles. Facebook is a platform that fosters social interactions and developers can optimize their games on it real-time as opposed to Apple’s iOS which requires submitting app updates through their curation process. The best tie-ins are entertainment companies as they have fast turnaround times when discussing what they want and also have some predictability (developers can expect an influx of entertainment-related activity during summer time and plan ahead).

Developer Perspective

Developers are hesitant to do anything other than focusing on running a live service. Developers also need to gauge the opportunity cost and figure out how a branded experience will tie-in with the game – not a simple task as many developers have planned out content releases months ahead in time and figuring out tie-ins can be a time-intensive process.

Developers realize that the social gaming audience has matured and are learning to ignore a lot of display advertising. Players are coming to Facebook to have authentic gaming experiences that help them connect with their social graph, so the question for advertisers becomes, “How can we naturally integrate with a particular game that has the audience we’re trying to reach?”

Advertising has been a core component of monetization for many online games. The advent of social gaming flipped that dynamic and ads make up less than 10% of revenue for these games. The majority of the revenue is driven from virtual currency sales. In addition, offers have been reported to comprise 15-35% of revenue for many games. Despite being a credible source of revenue, branded offers may be an inferior way to monetize an audience vs. promoting your own titles (by creating an offer to promote your other games).

Ecosystem Today

Fast forward to today and we are seeing innovative methods in monetizing audiences on social games. Ad spending in social games has increased 60 percent since 2009 according to eMarketer and brands are looking for ways to be part of the experience that’s authentic and yields clear benefits. Before we delve into what’s happening today, let’s take a brief look at back at what the most popular social gaming companies have done with brand integrations.

Zynga has been a front runner in branded integrations, offering players in July of last year the ability to plant Cascadian Farm blueberries on their farms. This branded promotion was well received by the players who opted to plant the branded blueberries over other crops, resulting in a 550% lift in unaided brand awareness.

In November of 2010, we covered PlayFirst’s integration of Charles Chocolates in their Facebook title Chocolatier: Sweet Society. These branded goods were unlockable through the gameplay and could actually be ordered for delivery from within the game. The week before we covered CrowdStar’s collaboration with music agency Sparkart to sell a branded Bon Jovi bundle that included branded virtual goods, Facebook Credits giveaway and a coupon code for the Bon Jovi online store.

A few weeks prior to that we reported on Zynga’s partnership with the Farmers Insurance Group to launch a branded crop-protecting airship for Farmville players and is now working on a partnership with Nickelodeon/Paramount to promote Rango in Frontierville. As part of the Rango promotion, players can do three Rango quests and win a Rango statue inside the game. Zynga has in the past partnered with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Dr. Dre and Universal Studios Home Entertainment for Mafia Wars related campaigns. CrowdStar has also had its share of brand integrations, the most notable being their deal with Old Navy to include an Old Navy store within It Girl.

Another recently announced campaign is Clorox’s Scoop Away brand campaign which is integrating inside of social game Happy Pets on Facebook. As part of the campaign, players receive a free Scoop Away branded kitty litter box for their pet by watching a Scoop Away video via the WildTangent BrandBoost platform. This engagement provides additional in game value from Clorox by keeping a player’s litter box clean for 7 days versus the normal 24 hour period a standard litter box provides. With this meaningful and relevant tie in to the existing game mechanic, Scoop Away aims to position itself as the kitty litter brand of choice to players of the game.

Innovative solutions

If developers really want to add additional revenue streams to their games, they have to be mindful of maintaining authenticity without disrupting players’ gaming experiences. Offering a solution in this space is WildTangent, an 11 yr old private company that has gone through a couple of different pivots and is now positioned strongly to help social game developers add additional revenue streams to their games. WildTangent has been quite successful with its pre-loaded games business where they pre-load casual and MMO games on OEMs.

WildTangent is offering an easy-to-integrate solution called BrandBoost to social game developers that is a complete opt-in experience. With BrandBoost, social game developers can offer their players premium advertising on behalf of specific brands that in turn reward the players with a branded virtual good. WildTangent avoids out paying virtual currency – instead focusing on delivering a branded virtual good that perhaps has some special functional benefit vs. other premium virtual goods in the game that are there just for decorative purposes. Recently, WildTangent carried out a Clorox campaign inside CrowdStar’s pet focused title Happy Pets. In this campaign, players watched a video for 30 seconds and received a litter box that kept their litter box in the game Happy Pets clean for 7 days.

In addition, WildTangent has relations with plenty of game developers so if an advertiser comes to WildTangent looking to integrate into games, WildTangent can suggest 2-3+ games that would be a good tie-in for the brand. WildTangent is now working with many companies such as PopCap Games and CrowdStar to help fill and represent their inventory with brand tie-ins, so we can expect more and more interesting things to come.

So what exactly is special about BrandBoost and other solutions such as Hi5′s SocioPay and SocioPath? Both companies have 1 element in common: Alex St. John. A veteran in the gaming space, Alex St. John spent several years at Wild Tangent and is now CTO of Hi5, a social entertainment company. These companies are offering Ad/Commerce Hybridization models that blend advertising and commerce without cannibalizing commerce revenues. This model requires extensive analytics to predict user behaviors and serve the right mix of payment options and advertising to maximize revenue.

Costs

Traditionally advertisers will do a media buy based on the kind of impressions and engagement being offered. For example, taking over IGN’s front page, which has about 600k visits a day, can cost between $50,000 – $60,000. The dynamics of social gaming are way different, however, as the engagement on games is far deeper, hence costs substantially more. A game with 100k DAUs and 1MMAUs can easily command 125-150K for a branded integration.

Process

Brands that want to advertise on games first have to identify which games would be a good fit for their particular campaigns. A fit may seem simple as a food company integrating into a farming game – but it is more complex than that. Brands must look at demographics, behavior, regional specifications and other user data. If you don’t have access to it yourself, companies such as WildTangent can help suggest games that would be a good tie-in.

Once initial conversations start, brands have to relay their goals and success metrics to the developers and then decide on the length the campaign will run. Developers can then internally discuss whether the ideas and creatives suggested by advertiser would be a good fit for a content update to their game and whether it would make sense from an opportunity cost perspective. Since developers usually plan out content updates and releases well ahead of time, conversations should start atleast 1-2 months prior to the date of execution unless its something very urgent or spontaneous such as raising money for a disaster relief that a brand wishes to sponsor in some form or fashion.

If all is go, then contractual agreements can be put underway and integration plans begin. Brands tend to sponsor virtual items with some kind of bonus value add and hope that such a campaign will boost brand sentiment immediately and build loyalty in the long run. The key thing is to avoid coercion and keep the campaign opt-in, letting players who don’t wish to view the branded engagements exit out. It’s also important to run the campaign for a specific length of time, creating scarcity in the process.

Future

Facebook will be making Facebook Credits mandatory for all developers come July. It also has one select partner through which it will be letting developers use offers: TrialPay. However, these are all ‘hard offers’, and don’t encompass soft offers. A hard offer is anything that requires the exchange / capture of user data and personal information. In the case of offers, information about users engaging in offers is sent by developers to TrialPay. Brand advertising on the other hand is a soft offer as it’s not capturing user information. With that said, any soft offer engagement is instantly recognized and developers can pass along data back to the integrated brands daily showcasing how their players are responding to the campaign. The brand and developer can leverage this real-time data to work together to optimize the campaign in order to deliver their players the best experience possible.

In the future we will see social games add in a plethora of location-based elements, mobile and cross platform capabilities and unique brand tie-ins where brands sponsor and enhance player experiences (i.e. giving boosts). For a company that’s offering an interesting solution on mobile, check out Tap Me. Another company called RadiumOne, previously known as gWallet, has a solution called ‘ShareGraph’ that helps brands reach consumers that are having conversations with their ‘real’ friends outside of social networks about specific topics that are relative to the brands’ interests.

The best type of brand integrations are those where players don’t even notice that the brand is there, yet report an increase in brand metrics. We have barely begun scratching the surface on brand advertising within social games, so expect this space to mature and for developers to add nice revenue streams for themselves and brand partners alike.(Source:Socialtimes


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