Virtual World in 2007
As 2007 began, the virtual world environment Second Life was riding high on a wave of interest from users and advertisers, but as time went on, many marketers and agencies began to question the return on investment of their virtual projects.
"2007, especially early 2007, was the year of Second Life," said Greg Verdino, chief strategy officer for Crayon, a marketing consultancy. "Late '06 through '07 was this interesting virtual world rollercoaster ride, where coming into '07 everybody thought they had to be in Second Life, and they didn't know why."
Second Life continues to grow and attract the attention of major media firms and advertisers, including CBS and its CSI franchise. Greater competition is also cropping up from Web worlds oriented around specific demographics, especially children and teenagers. Coca-Cola funded PG-13 virtual realm There.com and CosmoGirl. Meanwhile Disney acquired kid-aimed virtual world Club Penguin and switched its own ToonTown offering to a subscription model. Nickelodeon jumped into the mix with Nicktropolis.
As the virtual worlds industry moves into 2008, Verbeck and others predict lessons learned from 2007 will mean fewer small and rushed campaigns will be created, and instead advertisers will look for opportunities to create larger projects tied to quality content.
"People jumped in without a strategy or a plan; there was no quality content to tie to a brand, so user [went] in and moved on," said Christopher Sherman, executive director of Virtual Worlds Management, a media company. "Now you're going to see content tied to the brand, and high quality content coming out of Disney and Warner Bros and the CSI stuff. Just like any advertising medium you have to tie your brand to quality content. The risk will be much lower for the advertisers and the brands because people that are experienced with creating content are getting into the space."
"You're going to see a lot more and wider variety of businesses making money off virtual worlds," he said. "Too much was done over the last year and a half that didn't involve money, and that's why you've seen a down side."
http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3627979
Electric Sheep laid off 22 employees, scaling back its events staff and cancelling several projects, including the creation of an ad network for use within the Second Life virtual world.
"We feel that the time is not right to place more bets on that currently," said Verbeck of the network. "We felt that large scale advertising to the current Second Life user base by real world companies is not a big opportunity in the short term."
http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3627922
"2007, especially early 2007, was the year of Second Life," said Greg Verdino, chief strategy officer for Crayon, a marketing consultancy. "Late '06 through '07 was this interesting virtual world rollercoaster ride, where coming into '07 everybody thought they had to be in Second Life, and they didn't know why."
Second Life continues to grow and attract the attention of major media firms and advertisers, including CBS and its CSI franchise. Greater competition is also cropping up from Web worlds oriented around specific demographics, especially children and teenagers. Coca-Cola funded PG-13 virtual realm There.com and CosmoGirl. Meanwhile Disney acquired kid-aimed virtual world Club Penguin and switched its own ToonTown offering to a subscription model. Nickelodeon jumped into the mix with Nicktropolis.
As the virtual worlds industry moves into 2008, Verbeck and others predict lessons learned from 2007 will mean fewer small and rushed campaigns will be created, and instead advertisers will look for opportunities to create larger projects tied to quality content.
"People jumped in without a strategy or a plan; there was no quality content to tie to a brand, so user [went] in and moved on," said Christopher Sherman, executive director of Virtual Worlds Management, a media company. "Now you're going to see content tied to the brand, and high quality content coming out of Disney and Warner Bros and the CSI stuff. Just like any advertising medium you have to tie your brand to quality content. The risk will be much lower for the advertisers and the brands because people that are experienced with creating content are getting into the space."
"You're going to see a lot more and wider variety of businesses making money off virtual worlds," he said. "Too much was done over the last year and a half that didn't involve money, and that's why you've seen a down side."
http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3627979
Electric Sheep laid off 22 employees, scaling back its events staff and cancelling several projects, including the creation of an ad network for use within the Second Life virtual world.
"We feel that the time is not right to place more bets on that currently," said Verbeck of the network. "We felt that large scale advertising to the current Second Life user base by real world companies is not a big opportunity in the short term."
http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3627922
posted by Conny at
12:33 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home