Tracking online gamers is now big business

ONE OF THE FIRST talks at Game Developers Conference in Austin was by Edward Hunter of Comscore, and it was all about measuring and tracking online gamers. The subtext could equally be that gaming is now growing like mad and touches all demographics.

What Comscore does is measure the habits of 'opt-in' users, and track what they do in detail. The information is then anonymised and uploaded to their servers, and through the magic of statistics, profiles are created. This is useful for people trying to shove things down your throa.... err... sell you useful things you didn't know you needed.

A broad overview, drill down from here

You end up with demographics like the chart above. Some are generalised, others can tell you exactly which sites people with certain interests go to. The gathered information is backed up by surveys of the two million or so people monitored, and Comscore claims to have a pretty complete picture of what's going on.

For example, gamers used to be the classic male 18-24 year-old demographic, you know the type. Now it is basically all over the map, male, female, young and old, and the population is also growing like mad. For example, in 2007, 2.5 million females aged 9-14 played games online, and this year, it is up to 4.7million, and for the 35+ year-old female segment, the numbers are up from 19 to 23 million.

Males are a little more mature in the market, just not the players themselves, but there is still growth. In the 55+ year-old segment, game players went from 3.9 million in 2007 to 5.3 million in 2008. The total online gamer population in the US went from 237 million to 305 million in the same time span. Pretty solid growth numbers all around.

So, why is this important? Well, advertisers like to shov.... sell you things, and the more they know, the better than can cram... expose you to their products. The traditional male 18-34 demographic is highly resistant to 'traditional' ads, a code word we take to mean 'smart'. Additionally, people have generally been found to not pay attention to ads on sites they are focusing on. If you go to a car site, you will likely ignore car ads, but if you go to a computer site, you are much more receptive to a car ad.

So, marketeers must hit sites not necessarily directly related to pigeons they are directly selling to. If you like skateboarding, and a company wants to sell you new wheels, they are much better off going to the mens' magazines you also frequent and putting ads there than on Skaterattt.com.

How do you know what sites skateboarders go to? See the demographics above.

The more you can profile people, the "better" the ads become, and the more valuable the data on them is. It is kind of like the old MMPI test, but the advertising side has more sociopaths. You can also do not-quite-so-subtle things like put the same ads on every site visited by a demographic to get maximum annoyanc.... exposure among the target audience.

The most interesting part is that game developers like and sometimes want to have this data measured. They can sell ads in the game, and there is a somewhat synergistic relationship between the game maker and the sites the gamers go to.

To facilitate this, Comscore has a few recommendations that basically boil down to "Don't hide data". If your game uses standard calls, ports and APIs, they can see it. If they can see it, they can cross reference it and track it. Then they collate it, package it, sell it, and the people that buy it push ads on you. That in turn makes the game more valuable in some respects.

It is a win/win situation for almost everyone involved except the poor user. They get next to nothing positive. The ad people will tell you that targeting is for your benefit, and maybe not getting hemorrhoid creme animations when you are looking for a new video card is a plus. But it all boils down to not being able to control your own information, that is never good.

Gaming is growing and spreading to all areas of the population. Some are hardcore, some are kids, and others are casual. The industry is maturing, and the rest is inevitable. This is what they call progress. µ