At June 2007, the Australian cinema box office did approximately $200m in turnover whilst the Australian games industry cracked a little over $1bn! Internationally, US males between the age of 18-34 spend on average 41.7hrs playing video games each week. We don’t have available recent data from Australia, but would assume we’d be a little less, somewhere around the 30- 40hr mark one would assume.
To give you another idea of how much loot the gaming industry is generating here in Oz, when Spider-Man 3 hit screens, it did $150m in its first weekend compared to when Halo 3 was launched which did $170m in the first 24 hours.
In- game advertising is an area that is starting to emerge more in Australia, with some specialist agencies from abroad stepping into this space, but as a result, data on its effectiveness here in Oz is still quite limited. US data is quite romising though, brand familiarity increased by 64% with average purchase consideration up by 41%, same as ad retention.
The big benefit of in- game advertising is the captivity that it creates – on average Australian users spend between 1-3 hours on each game they play, playing at least three times per week – there’s no risk of channel hopping so you’ve got a captive audience.
Essentially, the main opportunity presented by gaming is ‘in- game’ advertising using billboards, brand placement and other signage. With the integration of the internet into gaming consoles, these ads can be refreshed and updated just like we find in advertising conducted online.
