Video continues to be a growing method for consumer consumption of information and entertainment. According to an article in BusinessWeek this week:
“The average American (age 12 and up) with Internet access spends more than 6 hours a day watching videos, shows, news, and sports - or playing games - on screens of one sort or another…Solutions Research Group…predicts a rise to 8 hours a day in 2013.”
“…on average TV accounts for 4 of the current 6 viewing hours. The other 2 hours involve the Web, DVDs, gaming consoles, and mobile devices. (The ratio is roughly reversed for the 12-to-24-year-old set.) By 2013, the group forecasts, Americans will spend an average three hours daily viewing or playing with PCs and mobile devices.”
How addictive is gaming? “Total time spent gaming online hit 11.4 billion minutes in December, up 27% over the previous year…Only e-mail and shopping keep people online longer nowadays.” So, naturally, media companies and advertisers are looking for ways to leverage the popularity of online games. BusinessWeek reports that MTV has been taking advantage of this growing trend and now “is pushing hard into online games in pursuit of their rich advertising potential and can’t have failed to notice that traffic growth is slowing at social networks.”
MTV has been signing up advertisers for its games, and one of the more recent additions: Staples. Staples “recently sponsored a game on ShockWave.com, an MTVN site that attacks millions of women users. The game features the Easy Button from its TV spots that, when pressed, magically makes chores disappear. Women visitors were asked to submit photos showing why they needed an Easy Button. They voted on the top five–including a messy garage–and the winning photos were converted into digital jigsaw puzzle, which happen to be a favorite among women gamers.”
I am continually surprised at the number of female gamers, but everywhere I turn lately I am reading about the popularity of gaming and the how women love gaming too. See my previous entry on how women spend their time online.
But, I digress. The point is, online gaming boom is showing no signs of slowing and advertising within games is the new product placement. In fact, advertisers are expected to spend $2 billion on online games in 2012, four times 2007’s total.
Courtesy of Advertising Age this week, we learn that 2007 was the year that women tipped the scale to compose more than 50% of online users. What are they doing online?
- Shopping: travel, clothing, health & beauty products, financial products, and food. Women 45 to 54 were much more likely than men to make impulse purchases online when given limited-time offers or extra free items.
- Gaming: women are more likely to pay for play.
- Viewing video: news, movies previews, and music videos.
- Parenting: more than 43 million moms go online daily and spend an average of 85 minutes there.
- Socializing: women 25-34, with a college degree are more often to search for local dining and entertainment information, use instant messaging, visit social-networking sites, read blogs, and download music.
- Dating: when dating online, they lie about weight more often than any other attribute.
- Staying healthy: almost 84% of all women sought healthcare information online.
