HACKENSACK, N.J., March 18, 2008 — An inside look at online advertising from Slingo.com, a top casual game site, reveals some important lessons for online video advertisers.
If you thought there was a lot of video content online now, you haven't seen anything yet. More than 154 million Americans will watch online videos this year. According to eMarketer, that's a 12.1% increase from last year. But are these online video ads really engaging consumers?
Most advertisers are still experimenting with video advertising and rightfully so, according to a recent study by Burst Media, which surveyed more than 2,600 online users in December 2007. Half of the respondents (50.7%) stop watching an online video once they encounter an in-stream advertisement. The benefits for watching online video advertising need to be greater in order to engage viewers and be more successful.
The type of content an online consumer is viewing has a lot to do with the success of a video campaign, according to Steve Silberberg, head of ad sales development for the digital interactive entertainment company, Slingo, Inc. "When video ads are served in front of non-video content, like an engaging casual game from http://www.slingo.com, the online viewer has a much bigger stake in the overall experience, because the payoff to the end-user after the video ad has played is higher."
Online video ads generally do not offer a big enough reward in exchange for the user's time; most online pre-roll ads are followed by similar content, video content following video content, that often does have a strong payoff. For a two-minute video, a thirty-second pre-roll advertisement is one-fourth of the total experience, which is too much for most viewers, especially online where everything is so fast-paced. The potential payoff to the online user needs to be bigger for them to put up with that level of intrusion. The online medium is very different from television where viewers are watching half-hour or hour-long shows with an average advertising pod of four to five minutes on prime time television.
If the payoff is big enough for the user, with more engaging content, the effectiveness of the ad goes through the roof. Each and every Slingo.com free game begins after a pre-roll video ad, and more people are willing to watch it because they know that the free casual game they will play as soon as the ad is over will truly engage them. The average Slingo.com game player spends over 10 hours playing free games on http://www.slingo.com per month. That equates to an average of 100 video ads every month delivered to a highly targeted engaged audience.
Merry Poppings, the latest free game from http://www.slingo.com that is preceded by a video ad, is a great example of maximizing the combination of video ad content with casual game content. This Slingo.com casual game consists of two play modes, the midway mode and the sideshow mode. In the midway mode, the casual gamer can play up to 10 levels, where each level of the popular online game is separated by a pre-roll ad intermission. In the sideshow mode, a pre-roll ad intermission is broken up into seven-minute game play intervals. Anyway you play it, from an advertiser's or a casual gamers' perspective, there's a reward – to an advertiser, it's engagement; to a gamer, it's a free game.
The key demographic for online casual gaming is a virtually untapped market – women aged 35 to 65. Frank N. Magid Associates, a world leader in research-based consulting, published findings on the favorite leisure activities of women in a recent article in Advertising Age. The study reveals what Slingo.com has known for over 10 years – that playing free games online is one of the top leisure activities of women aged 35 to 65, which is the core demographic of http://www.slingo.com.
According to the Magid study, casual games are the third-favorite activity of all women. The results are especially revealing when the study looks at women 55 to 64, in which casual gaming is second only to watching TV. (Source: National Online Magid Media Futures Survey, March 2007). With Slingo's ad model of only one video ad at a time, online viewers are willing to wait and, more importantly, to watch online video ads, as opposed to watching a TV show where they usually change channels and surf during a pod of six or seven commercials before their program returns.
Online video advertisers can learn from the casual online gaming experience with the video ad-engagement-reward model. For more information about Slingo.com's experience with highly engaging video advertising, contact Steve Silberberg at Email.
About Slingo, Inc.
Slingo, Inc. is a U.S.-based company that has developed and licensed the intellectual property for the Slingo(R) brand of games for over 11 years. As a digital interactive entertainment company and thought-leader in the casual games industry, Slingo, Inc. has successfully licensed to partners worldwide for use with: free online game sites, downloadable games, lottery tickets, casino slot machines and table games, a television game show, interactive television, mobile phone games, and most digital interactive mediums. The original Slingo game boasts that over three billion games have been played to date. Slingo is also the first in many areas, including First cyber lottery ticket and First casual game to be made into a television game show. Slingo, Inc.'s long list of partners have included America Online, AC Coin and Slot, IGT, United States Playing Card Company, Funkitron, Scientific Games Corporation, PixelPlay, Hasbro, Tiger Electronics, I-play and Oberon-Media. People can play Slingo and more than 30 original games as well as join the social networking community by going to http://www.slingo.com – For press inquiries contact Email