STUDY: THE ADDICTIVE NATURE OF SOCIAL GAMES INCREASING BRAND ENGAGEMENT, THERE ARE NOW 350 MILLION ZYNGA GAMERS

Social Gaming panelists at the OMMA Social conference in New York on Thursday said the power of games to get people to engage with brands is driven by the addictive nature of the games, and if they are at the right place, they can have captive audiences who are also willing to share what they learn.

Jay Samit, CEO of SocialVibe tells how SocialVibe worked with Kia to drive engagement within Zynga's social games during the last Bowl Game.  

"Thirty percent of viewers of prime time TV are watching with another screen open. It's a great medium for storytelling, but why spend money on a Super Bowl ad and then ask people to go find it on YouTube?  We saw three-minute average engagement because they were still playing FarmVille."

Samit said that social gaming is valuable because brands become a gateway to virtual goods or the chance for consumers to engage with a game on a different level.  Says Samit,

"We call it value exchange. It used to be that 100% of all advertising was interruptive. Here, it's the opposite. A person has reached a point in the game where they can't progress, so they say, 'Yes, I'll engage with brand.'"

Richard Muncaster, vice president of corporate strategy for KlickNation, which sells virtual goods for virtual currency, said brand engagement is the rule, not the exception.

"Ninety-seven percent of players don't pay."

Samit added that the average engagement time is 63 seconds, and that as many as 40% of consumers then share the experience via social media.

"Forty-one percent will 'like' or become fans."

He said there are 350 million people playing Zynga and two-thirds of the time spent on Facebook is gaming.

"I would go so far as to say that FarmVille and games like that have replaced the soap opera for the working woman who is busy and does not have time to have her own space."

Muncaster, whose company focuses on role-playing games targeting men 25 to 45 years old, says that on average, players engage with games three times per day, for 17 minutes each time.

Samit says brand integration in social games is particularly effective with entertainment properties.

"It is eight times better at putting butts in movie seats than any other kind of ad. We found that 40% of those consumers who engaged with a movie in social games went on to buy online tickets. There is also a 30 times better response on social gaming to get people to file taxes."

COMMENTARY:   To be honest with you, I've never been much of an online social game player.  I found it incredible that 350 million people play Zynga games and that two-thirds of the time is spent on Facebook gaming.   I thought that the "Biggest and the Badest" was supposed to be a social network, not a gaming hall.  

According to eMarketer, the total number of US social gamers will increase to 68.7 million or 29% of internet users.  

US social gaming revenues are still relatively small when compared to the overall online advertising market, but growing rapidly.

According to an eMarketer forecast in July 2010, worldwide social gaming revenues are projected to grow to $1.526 billion by 2014.

Let's look at the Top 25 Faceook Games for June 2011:

This week’s top paid iPhone game titles on the App Store, as captured on June 13th 2011, are as follows:

1. Angry Birds ($0.99)
2. Hanging With Friends ($1.99)
3. Pocket God: Journey to Uranus ($0.99)
4. Tiny Wings ($0.99)
5. Angry Birds Rio ($0.99)
6. Fruit Ninja ($0.99)
7. Cut the Rope ($0.99)
8. Tetris ($0.99)
9. Feed Me Oil ($0.99)
10. NBA Jam ($0.99)

Newtoy’s Words With Friends follow-up Hanging With Friends earns second place in the iPhone charts in its premiere week, narrowly outselling Bolt Creative’s fellow recent debut Pocket God: Journey to Uranus.

Andreas Illiger’s Tiny Wings recovers after a recent drop in popularity to claim fourth place, meanwhile, as Chillingo’sFeed Me Oil competes with the discounted EA titles Tetris and NBA Jam in the chart’s latter half.

Here are this week’s top free iPhone games:

1. Hanging With Friends Free
2. ShapeShift
3. iFighter 1945
4. Rip Off
5. Hangman RSS
6. Bunny Shooter Free
7. World Cup Table Tennis Lite
8. Parachute Ninja
9. AC-130
10. City Friends

An ad-supported version of Hanging With Friends leads the free app charts, followed closely by Backflip’s free puzzler ShapeShift and EpicForce’s arcade shoot-’em-up iFighter 1945.

Skyworks’ World Cup Table Tennis Lite also premieres as a popular pick this week, rivaling Freeverse’s Parachute Ninja and Colorbox’s recently released Rip Off.

Courtesy of an article dated June 9, 2011 appearing in MediaPost Publications Marketing Daily and an article dated June 1, 2011 appearing in Inside Social Games and an article dated June 14, 2011 appearing in PCBunny

 

Comments

[wow gold]

I actually don't know why some of my friends got hooked on playing zinga games on facebook especially farmville and cityville. It looks so boring to me. Anyway, what I love is the angry birds for iPhone. :)