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Advergames can be a great cost-effective way to create a buzz and increase awareness of your brand, product or service online. But is it enough to just think of the game as a means to an end and spend as little as possible, or is it worthwhile allocating a larger budget to your advergame?

Many marketers seem to believe that all advergames are built the same and take some convincing of the merits of spending more than the bare minimum on their custom advergame. The problem is, having a minimal web based interactive widget built and trying to pass it off as a game rarely works. By choosing to use advergames in your marketing strategy, you’re choosing to advertise your product to the casual gaming community. If you’re not offering something genuinely worthwhile then they’re unlikely to take much notice. Going down this route will give you a minimal chance of success and may mean that a chunk of your marketing budget has been wasted.

If your advergame is to succeed, you need to consider two main factors:

1) Will your game attract players?

Any successful advergame will grab your audiences attention, keep it for as long as possible and make them want to return again and again. The better you can accomplish this goal, the more time will be spent viewing and interacting with your brand. To do this you must create a great, immersive interactive experience for players. The more the game sucks them in the better the results will be for your business.

2) Do online gaming community websites embrace your game?

The other factor in the success of any advergame is the spread of the game amongst gaming community websites and blogs. This is absolutely essential in order to get your advergame in front of the numbers of players it needs to be successful. Without traffic from third party websites, which either host the game themselves or link to the game on your website, you’ll be left with a game that gets very few plays. Quite simply the better the game, the more buzz it will generate, the wider it will spread, the more exposure your brand will get and the more traffic will be directed from the game to your website or online store. Conversely, if your advergame is rubbish, very few people will want to play it, or share it with others and again it will fail to produce satisfactory results.

So if you’re thinking of using advergames as part of your business marketing, always remember that the more you put in, the more you will get out and ultimately the greater the success will be. All advergames should be a great immersive game in their own right, first and foremost, the advertising should always be secondary. This will benefit you brand with much greater engagement with your audience, and much greater traffic to your website or online store. To make your advergame successful means allocating the largest budget you can manage to the game, rather than trying to spend as little as possible.

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