February 9th, 2010 Posted by: Sam Granleese Comments (2)
Google appears to have, intentionally or not, started its own meme (as if the ‘Googling’ generized synonym for search wasn’t enough).
In December Google USA soft-launched a series of 30-60 second videos on their youtube.com/searchstories channel – where a series of internet searches a woven together to create a short story. A couple are clever, some plain odd.
Yesterday the most popular of seven Google created clips – Parisian Love – aired during the Superbowl. This itself was a clever tactic for choosing the most likely TVC to air, as of the seven Google created videos Parisian Love was by far and away the most popular (about 20 times more popular than the next, prior to the national Superbowl spot). Read more
January 28th, 2010 Posted by: Andrew Reeves Comments (0)
From an advertising point of view it has always surprised me how relatively long (it is only 3 years since YouTube launched in Australia) for the YT ad product to evolve. Of course this evolution is very much in keeping with the Google philosophy of user experience first; ads, monetisation and revenue second.
So, it was great to see yesterday a raft of new ad positions; many of which are engaging prominent homepage placements and video overlays (which are served only over professional content) and which were all clearly developed with a users experience in mind. In addition there are a load of new and quite sexy channel features now available for advertisers including video carousel galleries, video walls and for the adventurous an ability to create custom gadgets. Read more
January 5th, 2010 Posted by: Andrew Reeves Comments (1)
Wow, awesome, spectacular…. a few words that have been used to describe the movie of the moment – Avatar. I’ve seen it, you’ve probably seen it, and well yeah IMHO it’s deserved of its accolades. But that’s not the point of this post.
Moreover 20thCentury FOX are a client and as such we have been keenly following the way WoM and buzz for this film has grown from the release of the first snippets and teasers through its release date and now well into its cinematic release and arguably history making run at highest grossing film of all time. Read more
December 8th, 2009 Posted by: phil Comments (0)
Google’s version of real-time search was unveiled today, where ‘live’ search results are displayed via AJAX on the search results page.
At first glance, it’s a pretty nice execution, blending real-time with relevance, rather than just real-time, which is the focus of all new social/real-time search engines.
Read more
December 8th, 2009 Posted by: Andrew Reeves Comments (3)
We recently passed the hat around the media team at ZEDO to see what people thought would be the hot topics for digital in the upcoming year 2010.
Whilst there are some old favourites in the mix, mobile and personalisation, the scope of these rather broadly talked about themes is now beginning to take on a more defined shape and it’s a little easier perhaps to now identify where this growth will actually come from.
Our list for trends to watch goes something like this:
Read more
December 3rd, 2009 Posted by: Andrew Reeves Comments (0)
Farmville
Earlier this week my colleague Sam Granleese posted an entry on this blog debating the notion of user pay content? I thought therefore it might be a nice follow up to have a little look at another emerging market; that of Virtual goods.
Now, virtual goods are certainly not a new idea. We would all hopefully be able to recall from our ever diminishing short term memories the story of Anshe Chung, the first Second Life Millionaire who was successful in selling virtual land and property in a virtual world. Of course there are also WOW (world of warcraft) and other such fantasy gaming communities / worlds where there are existing markets for goods, powers and secrets. There are even companies dedicated to the dubious and sometimes illegal accumulation of said powers and weaponry which they then on-sell to eager gamers for ‘real’ dollars. But let’s be honest these are still relatively niche markets and unless you are a participant in these games you are unlikely to have seen and certainly not paid over your hard earned dollars for a virtual item. Yet that is.
Enter facebook and gaming applications are suddenly readily accessible to over 250Million users world wide. Currently the most visible and successful one is farmville
“FarmVille is a real-time farm simulation game developed by Zynga, available as an application on the social networking website Facebook. The game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops, trees, and livestock.[2] Since its launch in June 2009,[3] FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook ….”
I checked, and the Farmville application is currently being actively used by 69Million users. Much like the a fore mentioned virtual goods sellers Virtual Goods are at the heart of the Farmville experience with users earning or paying for virtual currency ‘coins’ and trading with one another to buy land, seeds, equipment livestock or even a duck. Interestingly advertisers are also allowed to provide offers or actions to users of this application asking them to conduct brand interactions; Watch a commercial, sign up for our newsletter or apply for credit in exchange for ‘coins’ provided by that advertiser.
Now Farmville is a very popular game and I assume is highly addictive, as are other such games like Mafia Wars where users can also pay for virtual items to help them achieve missions. Here is the draw dropping bit though; Virtual goods sales are estimated to hit $1 billion USD in 2009. (for reference the entire AU online ad spend for an established market is estimated at $1.7 billion for 2009)
So back to the question at hand. Are people likely to purchase virtual goods? They most certainly already are, and I think we can expect a lot more frivolous micro spending where that came from.
If anyone wants me i’ll be out on the farm with my virtual tractor working toward a holiday in 2020.
