Gamification Reaching into Advertising

Games are just about everywhere and are infiltrating finally into advertising. The term Gamification is the implementation of gameplay mechanics and elements into non-gaming applications. You might think of FourSquare as a game but it’s classified as a network .The reason you might think of it as a game is because of those gameplay elements. The same goes for Twitter, who has more followers, who tweets more often, these are competitive things that hook deep into the human psyche and make us want to outdo others. That’s a game.

Now, advertising is finally getting in on the fun and beginning to gamify. I just wrote an article today at ReelSEO that talks about gamification of online display ads and the future for online video ads. There might be some interesting information so I thought I would drop part of it over here and if you’re interested you can read the whole article over there.

There has been a lot of talk about interactivity in online video ads being the way of the future. But aren’t video games the ultimate form of video interaction? Imagine an ad in the future where you take the reins, you decide where it goes and you are the star. Pick up your gamepad and no longer just view ads passively, take control of them and make them do what you want. Fast forward, replay, gain lives, levels, coupons and gear. Beat the all-time high score and become immortalized on a box of LIFE cereal or have your likeness in the next Super Bowl Doritos advertisement.

Doesn’t that all sound like fun? Of course, we’ll need a whole new set of tools to create these, new agencies to make and market them and new...no wait, we can just hook online video ads to indie game developers around the world and voila! Instant industry evolution! 1-Up!