By all means play.

Dom McAree revealed a lot of interesting facts about the prevalence of gaming and its penetration across all demographics. 51 minutes a day gaming is the average among gamers. The gaming business is also a 15.4 Billion dollar business, which though 90% of this is revenue from game sales, that 10% of media sales is notable. That's where Dom comes in. He sells some of the worlds largest brands on media placement in select mobile games as well as on in game content like the billboards in some of the biggest franchises like FIFA and Madden. Another interesting figure is that 74% of people above age 12 play video games, while 68% are on Facebook, 54% use Youtube, and only 28% use Twitter. Games are emerging as the next great untapped media opportunity, but it will be dicey because the last thing anyone wants is for their private $60 game to have tons of distracting and excessive ad placement. This in part is why the freemium model excels for mobile games and brand placement, like the logos on the field in FIFA, tend to work better in console games. Gaming also boasts the highest level of engagement of any media at 97% relative to 72% mobile, 68% internet, 43% TV yet it still receives far less advertising revenue than any of these other mediums. Dom gave us two reasons for this. One, advertising in games is just entering the mainstream and everyone is still experimenting with the best ways to sell a brand through a game. Two, though statistics may show how unanimous gaming has become many of the worlds top brands still don't see it that way.

There are really only a few ways that a marketing message is passed along through a game. There may simply be logos of sponsors printed throughout stadiums in sports games like FIFA and Madden or as is more common in mobile games advertisements may interrupt gameplay through fullscreen videos or graphics that link out. EA has even made it so that watching some of these videos through to the end gives you credits that you can use in the game, so that players are incentivized to watch the content but not forced as with many freemium applications. Games provide a very unique channel for marketers to reach consumers, and it will be interesting to see how Electronic Arts continues to define the field.