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Cross-Media Bundling - Spotlight on Online Games
January 11, 2007
This post from Christy Dena on Cross-Media Entertainment is a nice extension of some of my discussion points on disaggregation. An interesting idea raised is that, "This disaggregation, indeed unbundling, focus misses is the counter activity of cross-media bundling. What I recommend producers do is to offer the option of a single-fee-multiple-form. This offers the audience the chance to purchase one piece of content in many media forms."
I thought I'd provide a breakdown of the online Entertainment industry to give an indication of where users are inclined to consume various forms of media. This may be used to inform at least the online component of a cross-media bundling strategy. Note that "Other" in the below table refers to websites within the broad Entertainment parent category.
What struck me as interesting in this table was that Games comprises more than 1 in 5 visits to the Hitwise Entertainment category, more than double of the Multimedia industry which is inclusive of video sharing websites. While we've seen the recent explosive growth of YouTube and video sharing, it would seem that the online Games industry is deserving of more attention by marketers and advertisers given its prominence in website visits.
If you were wondering, the leading Games website visited was online adventure MMORPG game, Runescape with 7.23% market share for the week ending 6 January 2007. In fact, Runescape has been the leading games website in monthly visits since January 2005 and currently ranks at #41 in all categories. So in a variation on the theme of cross-media bundling, if I were thinking about what MMORPG games to market for say a mobile device, Runescape would be a good place to start.
Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 11:36 AM
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I did a short follow-up post based on this data, to summarize, I think you are on to something. Furthermore, if page impressions go away as a measurement, which it seems they might be, then sticky sites get more important.
If you combine stickyness with uniques, then suddenly top game sites give myspace and youtube a run for their money.
http://nabeel.typepad.com/brinking/2007/01/is_2007_the_yea.html
Posted by Nabeel Hyatt | January 23, 2007 10:28 AM
To emphasise the 'stickiness' of online games, the industry average for session duration in Entertainment - Games was 14 minutes,1 second for the week ending 20 January 2007, compared to 10 minutes 54 seconds in All Categories.
Posted by Sandra Hanchard | January 23, 2007 01:30 PM
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Additionally, gamers are some of the stickiest people you're likely to encounter online.
For example Neopets.com (with a 2.59% market share) is known as one of the stickiest websites in the world. If you look at the average visit time in Hitwise, Neopets.com visitors are using the site for an average of 43 minutes per session - more than three times as sticky as Runescape users!
In June last year, Neopets teamed up with Cingular Wireless in the US to create a mobile wireless-to-web version of the popular game, so some cross-media development is taking place, unfortunately in this case, not for Australian NeoPets players.
Posted by shor | January 11, 2007 05:33 PM