Sign Of The Times

Are you one of the millions who are interested in online casual games? If so, this blog will be of interest to you. You see, here I am going to introduce you to how to enhance your fun and increase the entertainment value of gaming online.

Before releasing the details, I think you might be interested in some very real facts that circulate around the casual game industry. Many of the top experts in casual gaming have claimed 2007 will be The Year Of The Online Game. In fact, a few have even whispered that this will give online gaming the same stature as televisions, oh, say, 100 years ago.

Rightly so, as where else do you find an audience so devoted they are willing to forfeit sleep and eating? This audience will continue to grow, drawing more loyal, habitual and eager players from every walk of life. Hitwise’s Sandra Hanchard writes that, in the Asia-Pacific region, more than one in five visits in the entertainment category are to a gaming site. Well, it’s closer to a quarter:23.86 percent of visits were to online gaming sites, dwarfing multimedia sites’ 12.12 percent, and movies’ 5.92 percent.

“While we’ve seen the recent explosive growth of YouTube and video sharing,” says Hanchard, “it would seem that the online Games industry is deserving of more attention by marketers and advertisers given its prominence in website visits.”

Susquehanna Financial Group (SFG) agrees, and recently reported that just 16 percent of the international audience has been penetrated, in terms of online advertising. In the US and Europe, it’s more like 50 percent, but the Internet is evolving rapidly as a world market, and games transcend languages and cultures.

So what we have here is a world market, hardly served in terms of advertising, that comes back to these few sites day after day and spends hours per session at them. As noted earlier this week, the future is in time spent, not in page views. A virtual billboard along a virtual street will become prime real estate.Before going into details and background of Evolution Day, I thought it would be pertinent to share with all of you some information about the casual games industry and why many industry experts feel that 2007, will be The Year Of The Online Game!

Dayparting, an advertising term that labels specific audiences that watch or listen to specific programs at specific times of the day. Ever wonder why all those cheesy ambulance-chaser injury lawyers advertise during late night court shows? Or how commercials showing when Oprah is on, all favor the female audience? It's dayparting that typifies what you see when.

Getting the right people to watch at the right time as they are delivered the right advertising content is monitored by online gaming PR departments. Online sites are watched and by tabulating viewers by time and length, programmers can manipulate content for the best results. Hitwise has concluded that US visitors to IamGame.com spend nearly two hours a session, where as BrainKing visitors spend a bit less, an hour and a half.

Pogo, Hitwise says, is leading the way for this market by pulling in on average, 11% of the US visitors, while Yahoo Games does roughly 7%.

The need to use this percent information is becoming more and more necessary. Soon the internet will be ranked in the same way television and radio shows are ranked. Now, according to Susquehanna, the internet accounted for 25% of total media consumption in 2006, but in reality only 6% of total advertising dollars were spent there. The projected total spent on advertising is expected to rise to 12% by 2011.

Furthermore Susquehanna predicts gargantuan growth in online gaming. In 2005, only $56 million was spent advertising online gaming. The trends show that, on average, there is a 70%/year growth which will skyrocket reaching $1 billion by 2010. Because of this, 2007 is fast becoming the ideal time for online marketers to "jump on board". Time, as they say, will tell.

Top US gaming sites/average time spent on site.

1. http://www.pogo.com/2. Yahoo! Games3. http://www.runescape.com/4. Yahoo! Games Downloads5. MSN Games6. http://www.neopets.com/7. http://www.gamefaqs.com/8. Miniclip Games9. Addicting Games10. Yahoo! Fantasy Sports

Hitwise's Top Online sites/market share

1. http://www.iamgame.com/2. http://www.brainking.com/3. Hogwarts Live4. Eternal Kingdoms5. Hogwarts Extreme6. Cyber Arcade World7. Gothador8. Gang-Wars9. Game Bonus10. The Pokemon Crater

The article above was taken from a report on, WebProNews an iEntry.com publication --http://www.ientry.com/