Tag: mediapost

How to avoid in-game ad debacles

Posted on by Lab Team

How to avoid outrage for in-game ads (Anyaka via Flickr)Column originally featured on MediaPost

Last week, columnist Shankar Gupta noted the loading time debacle with “Wipeout HD”‘s in-game ads. The story is a frightening one for marketers unfamiliar with the gaming space. What was essentially a 10-second mistake resulted in the early termination of a campaign and loads of upset customers. Is the gaming space really so unpredictable and volatile?

Yes and no. Gamers can be a surly sort, quick to band together for a common cause against a shared enemy. But it’s really not that difficult to know how to avoid conflict. A key concept here is one that really should prevail for all media channels: The best advertising is perceived by a consumer as content. The “rocket science” for gaming ads involves maximizing ROI, targeting the buy, and leveraging the in-game elements into a larger integrated campaign. Avoiding a riot shouldn’t be rocket science, and here are a few tips to help avoid such a scenario. Read More.

EA: A market trend?

Posted on by Lab Team

EA: A marketing trend? (Sims3)Column originally featured on MediaPost

Electronic Arts is shaking things up and leading by example. The video game company seems to be evolving a new approach to game publishing, one that promises a cross-platform distribution model fortified against piracy.

The game worth looking at closely for following this trend is “The Sims 3.” The title launched but a few months ago, and has now seen over 3.7 million copies sold, outstripping the previous bestseller “The Sims 2.” What’s interesting about these sales is that they follow a torrent (pun intended) of pirated downloads from a leaked version of the game prior to release. Rather than lamenting the piracy, EA execs suggested that internally, they shifted the viewpoint to seeing the leaked version as an “extended demo.” The reason behind this was the sheer volume of additional content exclusive to registered users that didn’t ship on the retail disk.

EA has instead approached the Sims franchise as a content portal to additional downloads, some of which were free, and others for pay. They are now adding this same model to the iPhone version of “The Sims 3,” making use of in-app commerce enabled by the iPhone 3.0 software release. This brings up the other facet of EA’s burgeoning model that’s extremely compelling: cross distribution.  Read more.

IPG Lab and research firm OTX join forces

Posted on by Lab Team

OTX and Lab ink deal Today’s Mediapost article announcing our very exciting relationship with global research firm OTX, caps several months of negotiations.  Aside from the purely financial aspects of the deal, it strengthens and solidifies the Lab’s place, as not just a unique facility to learn about emerging media through our immersion based facilities but now a place to come and study emerging media by way of research.  While the Lab has been championing the virtues of doing research, this relationship adds an exciting layer to our product set and consequently our ability to help provide a comprehensive package for agency/client research needs.

The relationship with OTX actually dates back to last year.  Ongoing conversations brought us tougher to help them on their unique projects for “mobile Jeopardy” and MTV’s – Comedy Central/SpikeTV.

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