Unicast

At the current time, the general model for successful internet marketing and revenue generation consists of engaging users with brand messages and ultimately persuading them to take a call to action to purchase a good or service, either online or off. However, emerging technologies, increasing internet traffic, and the growing popularity of social networking has opened the door to a $5.5 billion dollar virtual commerce industry that could possibly have large ramifications to the future of online marketing and product sales.

For those unfamiliar with virtual commerce, it is described as the exchange of virtual goods or “gifts” as they are most popularly known amongst Facebook users. In other words, virtual commerce is the exchange of pixels for fake money (which must be bought with real money). Americans spent roughly $400 million on virtual goods last year, and this number is only expected to increase, especially following this week’s news of Facebook fostering a partnership with Malaysia-based MOL Global, a company specializing in virtual currencies. The entire industry is only two years old with much of the revenue and research coming out of Asia, but current trends seem to follow real world trends for consumer products, the laws of supply and demand, and the “Invisible Hand” of economics if you will.

For example, a luxury “out of production” Golden Halo, which can be worn by characters in the online world of Gaia Online, recently sold for $6,000 on eBay. To say that virtual goods will continue to follow these trends is probably jumping the gun, but it will be interesting to see how this online community develops in regards to security and how currencies can be exchanged across social networking platforms, dating sites, and other areas of the internet.

As virtual goods become more popular and user friendly, it is only a matter of time before advertisements with an immediate call to purchase within an ad unit emerge. For example, an ad featuring a virtual good with all of the necessary purchasing fields and a “Buy Now” button is a conceivable option. For now the virtual goods industry is still in it’s infancy, and not capable of making waves in the larger pool of digital marketing, but if people are willing to pay $400 million for “products” that cost a company virtually nothing, you better believe developers will be willing to spend money on game changing ways to market them online.

The Unicast Business Intelligence team has compiled general benchmarks related to campaigns served in the US during Q1 of 2010. These benchmarks are assessed across all Unicast tagged campaigns and are tracked across individual formats and verticals. This report provides a summary of the engagement and interaction performance of some of the most popular ad formats served by Unicast through March, 2010.

Key Findings Include:

•Branded Canvas ad formats, which are fully custom interactive units positioned within full episode video players, produced very high interaction rates and average video view time.

•Consumer Packaged Goods produced the longest average interaction time across verticals.

Unicast Analytics Benchmark Report Q1 2010