Why More Is More With Advergames

Advergames can be a great cost-effective way to create a buzz and increase awareness of your brand, product or service online. But is it enough to just think of the game as a means to an end and spend as little as possible, or is it worthwhile allocating a larger budget to your advergame?

Many marketers seem to believe that all advergames are built the same and take some convincing of the merits of spending more than the bare minimum on their custom advergame. The problem is, having a minimal web based interactive widget built and trying to pass it off as a game rarely works. By choosing to use advergames in your marketing strategy, you’re choosing to advertise your product to the casual gaming community. If you’re not offering something genuinely worthwhile then they’re unlikely to take much notice. Going down this route will give you a minimal chance of success and may mean that a chunk of your marketing budget has been wasted.

The success of any advergame depends on two main factors:

1) Is your game worthwhile to the online gaming community?

The main goal of any advergame is to grab the attention of your audience, keep them there and make them want to return again and again. The longer you can keep their attention, the more exposure you get. Obviously this means investing in a great game to providing a great interactive experience. The better and more immersive the game, the better the results will be for your business. You truly do only get out what you put in.

2) Is your game worth writing about?

Getting your advergame in front of the largest audience possible means getting it featured on the websites they visit. It’s not enough to just put your advergame on your website and hope the players will come, doing this guarantees failure. But why should they feature your advergame? This is where you need to give them great content that their visitors will want to read about and/or play. A great game will spread far and wide over the internet, being picked up and either hosted or written about and linked to by many gaming community sites, games portals and blogs. In some cases you may even get your game featured in traditional media such as magazines, radio or even TV. The better the game, the more you increase the chances of this happening. On the other hand, if your game is rubbish, very few websites are likely to feature it.

It’s extremely important that you think in terms of providing a great game for free, first and foremost, when using advergames as part of your marketing strategy. Although the tendency is to think of it from a purely functional advertising point-of-view, this can actually make the advertising within the game less effective. The more emphasis you put on providing a great, immersive interactive experience for players the greater the rewards will be for your business. Unfortunately, this means spending more than the absolute bare minimum in most cases. A great game in it’s own right will provide much greater engagement with your audience, increased brand awareness and much greater web traffic to your website or online store.

Simon Walklate is a partner in Bristol, UK based Flash game designer The Motion Monkey who specialise in advergaming.