Comments on: Does Virtual World Advertising Work?

By: Yuri van Geest

Yuri van Geest — Wed, 02 May 2007 07:36:07 +0000

Hi,

Insightful research. I agree.

In my view McLuhan is relevant here: the medium is the message. To me this is all about tailoring your key message to the particularities of the targeted medium. What are the distinctive features of Second Life relative to other media ? Second, what is the 2L target audience like ? What is their mindset ? What are their values ? What are they doing in 2L ? What are their expectations ? And how can corporations in general and advertising in particular be relevant in terms of this mindset of the residents ?

Those are key questions in my view. Examples are companies in 2L who enable and facilitate residents to create, to remix content and ads, to customize, to share and especially to learn. Smart advertisers deliver tools, amateur academies and workshops besides unique experiences leveraging the unique features of Second Life like the 3D view and its open nature.

Second Life is web 3.0 and is in essence about transformation, eLearning, identity, self discovery, fun/entertainment, social networking, peer production, creativity and imagination. That is a slightly different mindset than standard 2D web which is less open, less creative and less a platform. The loyal/innovative users think different relative to other media.

Simply, copy / paste a traditional marketing or advertising method or campaign from one medium to Second Life is destined to fail in my view.

By: Spud

Spud — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:54:16 +0000

The potential of advertising in Second Life is so new and largely untapped. I'm sure in the coming years it will evolve and develop to something a lot more worthwhile for businesses and users a like. SL is only going to get bigger and better and those busisnesses that don't get on board are going to miss out in the long term.

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:05:08 +0000

I think that online advertising works.

Especially in second life.

By: Steven Groves

Steven Groves — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:12:28 +0000

Nice work Wagner.

I'm beginning to just now see tools for measuring campaign ROI just now (new vendor / new product - very sharp product), and coupling the ability to measure campaign ROI in SL with the Gartner Report just released (which suggests that the metaverse interface will be ubiquitous by 2011) I think SL will be a lot more interesting to corporations in a very short time.

I'm compiling a list of multi-national corporations who are / will soon be in SL. I'll be posting the list soon at my blog.

By: Steve Morsa

Steve Morsa — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 14:57:51 +0000

An important issue I've not seen addressed yet is this: Those companies willing to allow site users to "mash up" their trademarks and copyrights could thereafter find themselves having a more difficult time protecting this valuable IP...because they've implicitly if not explicitly allowed others to do what they want with it.

As for whether or not advertising is such "environments" is worthwhile or not, it's looking like the answer is coming in that it depends on at least the following 5 factors:

Who you are.
What you're selling.
How you're selling/promoting it.
How you're measuring "direct" ROI.
Whether you care about difficult-to-measure "indirect" ROI/brand value increase/s.

By: Matt Moran

Matt Moran — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:57:59 +0000

Maybe firms advertising in SL should try committing to it properly rather than these toe-in-the-water efforts I’ve been seeing. Reebok did a reasonably good job except that the prim sneakers they were selling sucked compared to most of the footwear made by people who’d taken the time to learn how to craft decent prim footwear – I’m thinking Feri Beckenbauer as a good example here though he’s not alone. Nissan did a great job with their Nissan Island, and I’d be tempted to buy the car they made available in SL – except that in RL it’s only available in the US. Bear in mind that SL is international even if it’s based mostly in the US. If they’d done a similar job with a car they were planning to release in the UK/Europe, I’d have a chance of actually buying the thing at some point.