Software Development Under Control
Marketing and advertising inside of virtual worlds can represent a challenge on
many levels. A major issue is the distributed nature of virtual worlds. Technological
limitations preclude audience centralization, and a centralized audience has been
the pillar upon which traditional mass market advertising campaigns stood. Where
before the audience was fairly well guaranteed to be in a specific reachable space,
either via radio, television, magazines, or the various types of display advertising,
now within three dimension virtual worlds the metaphor begins to break down. The
audience no longer has mass effect as only a limited number of individuals can even
be in the same virtual place at the same time. This creates a dilemma for marketers
and advertisers looking to expand into this new and rapidly expanding medium.
On the traditional web based Internet, web pages have developed their own real-estate
of top banners, side banners, pop-ups, and the like. The mass audience forms impressions
from exposure to these central sources, which are readily turned into metrics based
on the one-to-one nature of pages and navigation clicks. Virtual worlds have no
such one-to-one relationship. There is the full range of three dimension space within
which the avatar can move wherever and whenever they wish. This makes tracking and
analysis of impression activity problematic.
AdSoft addresses these issues with the development of the first metrics backed mass
distributed display based advertising platform for virtual worlds. The AdSoft system
solves the problem of distributed audience with ubiquitous placement. By having
your message everywhere, you can be seen by traditional mass-media numbers of people.
The metrics problem is solved by using the enterprise capable virtual world metrics
capture and analysis tool, V-Tracker which has been extensively customized for the
AdSoft system. The AdSoft system includes advertising content management, advertising
rotation queue management, terminal management, and reporting, all coupled with
a multi-tier role based security system. All of these tools are available over the
Web, with zero in-world activities necessary to change which ads specific terminals
are displaying. A rotation of ads can be set up to run across 1000 terminals, or
play on just one, providing the ultimate flexibility.
AdSoft represents over two years of effort, with work on Version 1.0 starting in
December 2005. Now in Version 2.0, AdSoft is processing over fifteen million impression
minutes per month on the Second Life platform and is available for immediate porting
to other virtual worlds.
Ubiquitous Placement for a Distributed Audience
Viewable Range
Impression Minutes
Unique Impressions
Request
Click-Through
Captured Data