Marketing Profs

If I were to glance through your media plan, I'm sure I'd discover it contained all the usual, well-known media options. The TV and radio ads, the print ads and the outdoor advertising. We've all been going with these options for years, decades in fact.

We've always known we wouldn't be fired for nominating them. Just like an IT guy wouldn't be fired for installing an IBM solution.

But this security is fast disappearing. One day soon, you will be fired for your adherence to these options.

The computer gaming market's revenue is many times greater, and more rapidly growing, than that of the global movie industry. In 2004, Nielsen was already predicting that, by now, the movie industry would be just one-third the size of the computer gaming industry. So where is Hollywood's marketing power drifting? Online.

Are you ready for the brand building potential inherent in this scenario?

It's fascinating to reflect on the fact that almost every medium has a price which, at a click, you can Google and find out about within seconds. These are fixed and well-known prices, except in once case: the computer gaming channel.

What's the price of placing a commercial message in a computer game? I'm sure you haven't got a clue. Is it $1 per user? A million up front? One cent per second? Who knows? No fixed model exists. No media agency has, yet, really specialized in booking space in computer games.

This is new territory for brand-builders. And new territory often means new prices. New low prices.

Let's do the math. Research from my book, BRANDchild, showed that kids now, for good or bad, spend almost the same time in front of computer games as they do in front of a TV. These numbers will soon trend away from each other as computer games take the lead in the way kids allocate their time.