Xbox+Ads

= XBOX Advertising =

Overview
Xbox is a gaming consol that is owned by [|Microsoft]. The gaming system is for all ages, and all families. Xbox offers something called “Xbox Live”. Xbox Live is a subscription that you may purchase for $49.99 per year. With Xbox Live you can connect to gamers all over the world. Xbox live offers much more than just gaming, there are social media’s such as Facebook and Twitter at your finger tips. With Xbox live you can listen to your favorite music through “Zune” or watch a movie through “Netflix”. With Xbox Live you can connect to 60 percent of all Xbox consoles worldwide. Since the market is so big for Xbox Live advertiser got interested and began to express interest.

History
The Xbox game console that is produced by Microsoft was first released on November 15, 2001. As soon as Xbox entered the market they had to compete with big and powerful companies such as Playstation 2 and Nintendo GameCube. In 2004 Microsoft released Xbox Live. By 2005 Xbox Live gaming service had more than 1.4 million members. With Xbox Live advertisers could be in touch with the world’s largest games network, as well all sorts of social Medias.

Reasons for using Xbox Live advertising
By using Xbox Live you can choose the correct target audience to help you reach the audience with the right message at the right time. Advertiser can also have branded media ads to reach huge audiences. Some of the branded media are [|Bing], Windows live, and [|MSN]. With these Branded media ads you can create your ad campaign around them to help reach the right audience. Xbox live also offers Direct Response Ads. This could help your market objective in your ad campaign. Both in-gaming ads and in console ads can encourage user interaction. With this you have a better chance of more brand awareness and brand recall.



Reach and Frequency
Since Xbox Live is worldwide the audience is endless. The Xbox Live game advertising is growing dramatically. Just in the United States alone advertising will reach one billion dollars in 2012. As of 2008, there are over 40 million Xbox units sold over 37 countries, with over 17 million Xbox Live subscribers. This video demonstrates how Xbox Live can reach your audience.

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With 63 percent of Americans playing games advertisers can reach Men, Women, young and old. Xbox live offers advertisers with highly engaged users. With highly engaged user means high frequency. With In- Game Advertising allows you to place and ad in the game. For example in NBA 2K10 for Xbox you will find different ad on the billboards in the arena. Gamers spend an average of 50 minutes every time the play Xbox, thus making frequency very easy. This video shows how affect In-Game advertising can be. Xbox Ads

Potential Risk and Limitations
There really isn’t much risk using Xbox Live. With Xbox Live being able to narrow down your target audience to exactly what your campaign calls for leaves very small risk. They only risk in Xbox Live is if your overall advertisement doesn’t work. Xbox Live give you are very some chance of risk. The risk would be in the designers of the advertisement. Although there aren’t very many risk there are however some limitations. Xbox Live member are predominantly male gendered. Although there are women who use Xbox the majority of its users are male. Some other limitations are the older generation. A lot of the older generations do not use video game consoles, therefore making it hard for Xbox Life to reach those types of people.



Advertisers and Companies Using Xbox Live
There are many big name companies using Xbox Live. Some of these big name companies are [|Mc Donald’s], [|Ford], and Gatorade to name a few. One recent example is with the company Adidas. To celebrate the brands 60th anniversary Adidas wanted to design an ad campaign targeting young males. They choose to use Xbox Live. Adidas’s message was to show their target audience about the celebrity endorsed footwear collection. Their main goal was to improve brand awareness and depth of their product. So what Adidas did was create what is called a “microsite”. The young user could download Adidas picture and use them as their gamertag (Link on wiki) as well as downloadable videos. The results were tremendous. They had 348,000 downloads, 161,000 gamertag pictures which were shared with over 300 million friendship connections. With a click through rate at 2.25 percent. With Facebook and Twitter now on Xbox Live open a huge door for all different types of advertisements. Since Facebook and Twitter didn’t join Xbox until 2009 it is hard to see all of the possibilities using other social medias for advertisements in the future.



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Cost
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> The cost of Xbox Live advertisements varies with the type of campaign you plan. It is hard to find concrete evidence with the price of an Xbox Live campaign. The companies that use Xbox Live as an outlet for advertisement are already well defined. The companies that are using Xbox Live are companies like Adidas, Nike, Sprint and Mc Donald’s. When this big names companies use Xbox Live it is hard to come up with a certain number. The cost of Xbox Live advertisements vary. You could have an ad in a video game or on the actually Xbox menu. With that being said, the cost on Xbox advertisements depends on what you want to do with the advertisement. If you want to make a Video game with your product it is obviously more expense than someone placing their ad on a billboard in the game. From my research the amount of money that you would pay for an Xbox Live advertisement (if done correctly) doesn’t compare to the profit or brand awareness that is made from the ad.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Scheduling
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> The scheduling for Xbox Live changes with the games that are being released. The companies that use Xbox to deliver their message are aware of the upcoming game release. The clients of Xbox Live schedule their advertisements according to the games that are being released. They also schedule according to season. For instance now we are approaching summer, and the advertisement on Xbox Live are summer themed. On example of this is Mc Donald’s advertising their iced coffee on Xbox Live.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Impact
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The impact for Xbox Live is very strong. You design very specific campaigns to impact the target audience that you choose. The primary target audience for Xbox Live is ages 12-26. If you want to target males in the age group your impact will be very high. Just because primarily Xbox Live advertisements target that age groups does not mean you won’t have any impact on secondary target markets. The majority of Xbox Live users are this age but there are also many other users that don’t fall into that age group. Verizon is doing an advertisement on their now directed towards the older audience. They are promoting a new phone they have. They should impact the target audience that they are going for.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Audience Response
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> The audience response for Xbox Live is very good. Since most of the advertisements are interactive with the users, it creates a relationship with your consumer. They are not just passing through the advertisement like other forms or media they are actually using and interacting with the advertisements. Some advertising campaigns on Xbox are actually games. Since you are physically playing this game you should expect a great amount of brand recognitions through these types of advertisements.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Other Notable Xbox Live Advertisements
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Another famous advertiser who chooses to use Xbox Live was Doritos in late 2008 and early 2009. Doritos target audience was people between the ages of 16 and 24 and wanted to reach them in with their lifestyles. So what Doritos did was team up with Xbox Live to create Xbox Live Doritos arcade game. Fans could download the game through Xbox Live and play them. This was a very effective campaign. Over 160,000 Doritos game were downloaded with a reach of over 104 million users. That is just one very notable and popular advertisement. Here are some other videos of Xbox Live Advertisements.

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<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">References
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Kevin Ohannessian (November 12 2009) Facebook and Twitter Come to Xbox Live. Retrieved from <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> []

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> A. D. Smith (2007) Exploring advergaming and its online implications. International Journal of Business information Systems. Volume 2, number 3
 * || <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**http://inderscience.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&issn=1746-0972&volume=2&issue=3&spage=298**

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Xbox Live Advertisement site <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> []

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Xbox Live Advertisement site Europe <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> []

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Eugenio Santos Rafael Gonzalo, Francisco Gisbert (2007) Advergames. International Journal “Information Technologies and knowledge. Vol 1 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> [] ||