How do you feel about sponsored content?
By
2short2care,
Posted on: 2011-08-05 23:47 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Yes but people would whinge because Paragon sent their black squad armed with sharks that have lasers mounted on their fricken heads to tie them into their chairs and force them watch the ad. After all the free stuff is just like forcing them to watch the ad. ::rollseyes:: |
Originally Posted by BrandX
If all it said was...
[Click Here] to view ad to recieve free in game item. ..and one didn't have to see any ad unless they clicked the link, I'd see no problem with it. If people don't like it, they just don't have to click the link. |
Either that or they would whinge that they don't have the free stuff because by whatever they will NEVER EVER click on the link to see the ad but they should be given the free stuff anyway.
So doing it would ad more forum drama.
Hmm, on reflection more forum drama good. lets go for it.
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I would seriously start to wonder when Paragon had been taken over by the marketing staff of Gaia Online. <_<
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Let me give you a somewhat pertinent example:
I am a fan of ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com, and Channel Awesome in general. To the best of my knowledge, all the videos of all the participants in Channel Awesome are hosted on Blip.tv, which likes to show commercials at the start of each video. You'd think a 30-second commercial wouldn't be too bad at the head of a 25-minute reviews, but it is. Seeing a commercial once, that's not too bad. I'm a patient man. Seeing it 20 times, that gets old fast.
Actually, here's what happened to me right now before I came to the forums. I went to the site and noticed that Film Brain, the Cinema Snob, Phaelous and Mike J all had new reviews posted, so I sat down to watch all four reviews in a row. It's the weekend, after all, I have a couple of hours to devote to comedy reviews. Luckily, there were no commercials this time, but if there were (well, "was," as in singular), then I'd have had to watch the same commercial four times. By about the fourth time, I'm yelling "Get on with it!!!" at my screen as I sit back and wait for the "Ad will end in XX seconds" counter to count down. Ugh!
Ads, commercials and sponsored content are something I DO NOT WANT. For one, it is as I explained - they get really old, really fast. For another, I don't want my in-game immersion ruined by completely unrelated commercials, like Acclaim's "free" to play MMOs are (or used to be, I haven't checked recently). For another still, I want to keep real world money as obscure in the actual game as I can. I come to City of Heroes to get AWAY from the real world. I don't want it rubbed in my face.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I'd watch Lauren Bacall without a prize.
I'm interested in gauging attitudes, not making a suggestion. I believe that Paragon Studios is already well aware of how their competitors incorporate advertising.
The commercial would be voluntary. "Click here".
I had a different example game in mind than Gaia Online, but it's interesting to know that more than one company is using that method.
The more general question, perhaps, is this:
How can you leverage your non-paying players to generate revenue?
A successful free to play game will end up with some large percentage of players (Group F) that don't spend money, some smaller percentage of players (Group P) that occasionally spend a few dollars, and the smallest percentage (Group V) that are either subscribers paying monthly or premium players who regularly purchase game currency in large amounts.
Group F is not contributing to your bottom line directly. However, they ARE a self-selected audience targeted around your game's theme. That's a marketable quantity. If the method of marketing them is non-intrusive as far as your paying customers go, then where is the harm in marketing that pool of "eyes"?
I think we've established that in-game billboards were a mixed bag. The fact that so many of us still remember the shoe ad is, in one sense, a measure of its success, but that was the exact opposite of non-intrusive.
The optional launcher commercial works well for the game I mentioned. Each game is different, though. Hence, my curiosity about attitudes here.
Likewise, maybe to broaden the question - If you were tasked with marketing your thousands/millions of free players without intruding on your paying players, how would you go about it? Google ads? Market specials? Keep in mind that you don't want to alienate your Group F players. One reason the Pavlovian "watch a commercial, get a reward" model works (inasmuch as it does actually work) is that the Group F feels appreciated afterwards instead of exploited.
The flaw with this idea is the same flaw as with ingame billboard ads. In order to have sponsored content, you need sponsors. Any advertising director with brains more potent than rice pudding would look at the numbers in this game (even after the Free Player bump) and laugh. A decent sized newspaper has bigger daily circulation than this game did at its high water mark.
They're going to make far more money from us paying for points and buying an item for a quarter than they would by corraling an advertiser to pay to give us something for free.
"Null is as much an argument "for removing the cottage rule" as the moon being round is for buying tennis shoes." -Memphis Bill
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This method is already in use by other game publishers and has been for at least a couple of years. It's not something that I cooked up and thought "Hey, what a great idea!"|
Originally Posted by Lemur Lad
The flaw with this idea is the same flaw as with ingame billboard ads. In order to have sponsored content, you need sponsors. Any advertising director with brains more potent than rice pudding would look at the numbers in this game (even after the Free Player bump) and laugh. A decent sized newspaper has bigger daily circulation than this game did at its high water mark.
They're going to make far more money from us paying for points and buying an item for a quarter than they would by corraling an advertiser to pay to give us something for free. |
Do they make tons of revenue? I have no idea. I can only surmise that they generate enough revenue to justify doing it since they do, in fact, continue to do it.
Also, keep in mind that the true goal of this kind of marketing is to generate revenue from your non-paying players, not from your smaller population of paying players.
For what it's worth - The company in question contracts the advertising to a third party firm. The game publisher obviously has to allocate the resources to creating the in-game items, but it look as if this third-party is responsible for doing the actual marketing.That in itself is interesting because it suggests that the "watch a commercial, get a reward" method is lucrative enough to support two companies.
Again, is it making either of them filthy rich? Unknown and probably not. However - it's apparently making each of them sufficient revenue to continue the practice.
Who remembers this:
lol
I would be ok with sponsored things like watching trailers and stuff but it is never that cut and dry; they want you to give your name, address, birthday, etc.. jump through hoops 15 page window questions. If it was low on the intrusive level I would be down with it, however they never are...
It really depends on the advertisement.
Sword of Omens? Okay, that's pretty cool.
Smurf Hat? ...No, no, no, a million times no. 
I've played games with in game sponsorships, and the problem comes when they start advertising random things like razors and chocolate skittles.
Which also ties into what Lemur Lad said. Yes, CoH is the largest superhero MMO, but we're still a small market. The two major comic companies both have their own games, and most independent companies have better things to spend their advertising budget on advertising in CoH.
I love that advertisers are so desperate that they need to bribe us to watch their adverts now. 
"The Hamidon is a what what of what?" - Brian the mission guy.
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It doesn't suggest that to me. I hear stories about companies like that going out of business because it's an unsustainable business model, not as success stories. Basically, they're predatory, they rely on churning though gullible advertisers, or sucking in successive rounds of investment, to make things look more successful than they are. Not saying that about the game companies that buy into the scheme, just the "third-party" firms.|
Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
For what it's worth - The company in question contracts the advertising to a third party firm. The game publisher obviously has to allocate the resources to creating the in-game items, but it look as if this third-party is responsible for doing the actual marketing.That in itself is interesting because it suggests that the "watch a commercial, get a reward" method is lucrative enough to support two companies.
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CoH had a third party partner too, for the billboard ads. There are a lot of reasons the endeavor failed. I think our game needs to think twice and twice again before they go down that road again, because there are better options.
I for one would rather pay them money for items directly for the specific goal of avoiding advertising.
"Null is as much an argument "for removing the cottage rule" as the moon being round is for buying tennis shoes." -Memphis Bill
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I am so jealous! I looked and looked! Stood in front of an ad a SG member was looking at, and NEVER saw one of the real world ads! And I had the adblock off! I wanted to see the ads!|
Originally Posted by _AzA_
Who remembers this:
lol I would be ok with sponsored things like watching trailers and stuff but it is never that cut and dry; they want you to give your name, address, birthday, etc.. jump through hoops 15 page window questions. If it was low on the intrusive level I would be down with it, however they never are... |
I am disappointed!
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I would like to come down on the side of not interested in this thank you.
Enjoy your day please.
well now you got to see it; in all its glory. lol
I like the idea as SlickRiptide presented it, on the launcher (not in-game) & you get items (or possibly Paragon Points as well) after watching a short ad.
As long as it remains a non-obtrusive (no popup ads please) option on the launcher in which I can choose whether or not to participate in (example: click to view this weeks ad), thats fine, I dont have a problem with that.
But if it becomes a non-skippable ad that Im forced to sit through every single time before I can go into the game I wouldnt want that at all.
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Or even if they do it like the Xbox Live Rewards now: from time to time (maybe every other month) I get an email about a survey I can take or a service I can sign up for (the last one was, simply enough, Bing) to earn Xbox Live points.|
Originally Posted by Hero_of_Steel
I like the idea as SlickRiptide presented it, on the launcher (not in-game) & you get items (or possibly Paragon Points as well) after watching a short ad.
As long as it remains a non-obtrusive (no popup ads please) option on the launcher in which I can choose whether or not to participate in (example: click to view this weeks ad), thats fine, I dont have a problem with that. But if it becomes a non-skippable ad that Im forced to sit through every single time before I can go into the game I wouldnt want that at all. |
If they did this in an email fashion every other month and offered small sums of Paragon Points for it, I'd be down for that. And it'll be kept as far away from the game as possible.
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It would be incredibly tacky to say the least. A real mood killer. I wouldn't appreciate something like this at all.
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heh, years ago on liberty, and i assume on other servers, there was a vary large sg of smurfs, haven't seen them recently but around i1-3 ish they were ubiquitous.
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Originally Posted by NightErrant
Smurf Hat? ...No, no, no, a million times no.
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That's because CoX's playerbase is an order of magnitude too small to be considered a significant competitive force, much less a major one. /snark|
City of Heroes has *no* *true* competitors! |
From a business perspective, the above is a deal-breaker for any advertiser that understands the phrase "bottom line". CoX simply doesn't represent a big enough demographic to be a viable advertising audience, and you're delusional if you think Freedom will change that.
From a personal standpoint, if the game starts waving 3rd party ads of any kind in my face, I will give serious thought to cutting off my subscription until the campaign ends.
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I'm going to take a bit of a different tack here.|
Originally Posted by Leo_G
Wow I'm surprised how so many are absolutely against simply watching an ad. It'd be different if it also had a mini-survey at the end, but simply watching? Unless it's that some are easily swayed by shiny ads so will end up spending money.
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The problem I have with it isn't so much having to watch one commercial to get a shiny, it's the nature of the shiny--which is itself an advertisement.
Using an example cited towards the beginning of the thread, I don't want to see a bunch of characters running around with Swords of Omens, sporting Target t-shirts, drinking Coca-Cola, with their pet Sony robot following them, etc.
We are constantly bombarded with ads 24x7. I like that Paragon City is a reprieve away from it. I don't mind so much ads for their own products, or even a logo or two on the home screen, but the last thing I want is to be reminded of everyone trying to sell everything while actually in the game.
And yes, I'm aware of the in-game advertising that they toyed around with a while back. It wasn't so bad because it was always optional.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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Well, I wouldn't argue that such companies exist. Again - They've been doing this for nearly two years. That isn't fly-by-night and clients like Disney, Cartoon Network, and Warner Brothers aren't gullible know-nothing-about-advertising media companies. The game company isn't a small startup, it's an established veteran MMO publisher. I don't name names because the moderation on the forum is so draconian, not because it's some sort of secret.|
Originally Posted by Lemur Lad
It doesn't suggest that to me. I hear stories about companies like that going out of business because it's an unsustainable business model, not as success stories. Basically, they're predatory, they rely on churning though gullible advertisers, or sucking in successive rounds of investment, to make things look more successful than they are. Not saying that about the game companies that buy into the scheme, just the "third-party" firms.
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The third party company providing the marketing happens to be a local company (meaning greater Seattle/Puget Sound area) that has several years in the small, casual games industry. I've been in their offices before. It's not a fly-by-night company either, and if they're somehow bamboozling giant media corporations into giving their partner game publisher money for nothing then they are damn good con men in addition to being game designers.
The negative case is not some sort of proof that the positive case is an impossible or inconceivable one.
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Originally Posted by TonyV
We are constantly bombarded with ads 24x7. I like that Paragon City is a reprieve away from it. I don't mind so much ads for their own products, or even a logo or two on the home screen, but the last thing I want is to be reminded of everyone trying to sell everything while actually in the game.
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There'd definitely be a middle row to hoe between blatant commercialism and genre-appropriate toys that referenced pop culture. That pop culture reference could be its own sort of intrusion, of course. Then again, we have City of Heroes comic book covers as posters in our bases, or at least the option to have them. ;-)
*Edit*
The size of the playerbase keeps coming up. I don't see that being particularly relevant to the discussion. We're not having this discussion two years ago. Freedom is going to increase the number of accounts by a factor of ten, easily; or so I predict. You can't look at something like this and treat it as something that's aimed at subscribers. It's going to be aimed at the entire player base, Freems, Premiums and VIP's.
How effective freedom will be at keeping those numbers, I don't hazard a guess. Regardless, for some period of time (and hopefully quite a long time) they are going to have an audience that is large enough to be worth putting a product in front of them.
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i guess that is part of the disagreement, maybe we are advertized to in this fashion, but a lot of us are good at just blocking out he unwanted information and moving on, and seeking out information we want, so its as obtrusive as you allow it to be. if we team, we see a lot of "homages" to existing commercial products, do those bother you that much as well? Its not something im really strongly drawn toward or against, but the extreme sensitivity of some people to it really does mystify me.
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Originally Posted by TonyV
We are constantly bombarded with ads 24x7. I like that Paragon City is a reprieve away from it. I don't mind so much ads for their own products, or even a logo or two on the home screen, but the last thing I want is to be reminded of everyone trying to sell everything while actually in the game. And yes, I'm aware of the in-game advertising that they toyed around with a while back. It wasn't so bad because it was always optional. |
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I'd be down for that kind of marketing for Paragon Points, at least theoretically. The CoH player base would still be made demographically available to advertisers, but that wouldn't affect the game.|
Originally Posted by Friggin_Taser
Or even if they do it like the Xbox Live Rewards now: from time to time (maybe every other month) I get an email about a survey I can take or a service I can sign up for (the last one was, simply enough, Bing) to earn Xbox Live points.
If they did this in an email fashion every other month and offered small sums of Paragon Points for it, I'd be down for that. And it'll be kept as far away from the game as possible. |
As for the prospect of CoH players running/flying/jumping around in game in logo-branded clothing or with movie/tv tie-in items only becomes more distasteful as I contemplate it.
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My opposition is purely philosophical. I despise advertising because it is by its very nature insulting, and in fact as a consequence of that I am less likely to be swayed by it.|
Originally Posted by Leo_G
Wow I'm surprised how so many are absolutely against simply watching an ad. It'd be different if it also had a mini-survey at the end, but simply watching? Unless it's that some are easily swayed by shiny ads so will end up spending money.
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Doesn't matter how much you doll it up (lipstick on a pig anyone?), I will oppose in-game advertising in any form. The only reason I mostly ignored the previous failed attempt at it is because it was turned off by default. Start tying it to in-game items of any kind and you've lost me as a paying customer.
This is City of Heroes, not City of Pepsi. Please keep it that way.
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If all it said was...
[Click Here] to view ad to recieve free in game item.
..and one didn't have to see any ad unless they clicked the link, I'd see no problem with it.
If people don't like it, they just don't have to click the link.
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