The Wall Street Journal was full of seemingly unrelated but actually interconnected news today, mostly good.  You can save a few percentage points of iPad battery power and read it here:

U.S. Internet-advertising revenue increased 14% in the second quarter to a record $6.2 billion, according to an industry report issued by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, fueled by rising demand for digital-video ads.  The paper went on to report, maybe more significantly, that this rise easily outscoped the change in spending in other media.  I’d look for big deals in the video advertising space.  Brightroll, where friend Charlie runs sales, must be growing in value by the pre-roll second.

The founders and investors in ngmoco (including the improbably named Neil Young), will put $300 million dollars in its pockets plus up to $100 million more in earn out.  A Japanese social-videogame developer DeNA Co. announced today that it plans to buy the San Francisco-based  iPhone gaming applications developer.  According to claims relayed to Mobile Apps Briefing ngcomo has 60 million downloads of games like Topple and Maze Finger and over 13.5 million registered users — proving the stunning current value of creating products that help you waste your time.

The Journal also reports that at the end of September, Verizon Wireless had some nine million Android subscribers (up from zero a year earlier.  Not all that surprising, the ever geekier Androidius Humanus among us appear to consume more data bandwidth per user than even us greedy iPhone owners.  Because of this scale, Verizon claims that it will experience no pressure on its network when it finally gets to sell the iPhone……..and btw, I have a big orange bridge with condos in the towers that I’d like to sell you (cash only).  Reportedly AT&T was carrying a heavier load, (like you didn’t know that) of 16.5 million iPhone customers at the end of September.  Since every breathing human of the 5.5 million of us in the San Francisco Bay area is flaunting their iPhone right NOW, this means that there are actually 11.5 million more AT&T bandwidth suckers combined in fly over country and in New York, (where the network will also drop your calls with military precision.)

So in conclusion:

60 million downloads of ngcomo games means every man, woman child and home-schooled iguana iPhone user has an average of almost four of these time wasting apps on their phone.  Time wasting, whether watching video or playing Topple pays. Bigtime. More ads are coming your way. More pre-roll will prevent you from watching videos. Your cell network problems are either about to be magically resolved…. or not. Finally ngmoco sounded like a Japanese company to begin with.  Do you think Neil Young planned it this way?

And, clearly nobody is doing any work at all.  Including me.

Gamification is the emerging trend of making ordinary, routine and boring activities seem more like games and as a result more fun to do. Increased attention has come from applications like foursquare and Groupon which incorporate game like features into their applications.

What is more fun than going to a conference? Maybe going to a conference about Gamification. Now there is one.

The first Gamification summit will be held on January 20 – 21, 2011 at San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference. Center. Speakers will include Playmatics CEO Margaret Wallace and Microsoft Bing Rewards Director Keith Smith.

For more, VentureBeat carried this piece about the Gamification Summit as did Gamasutra. We’ll wait to see how the conference itself is “gamified”.

Nielsen and Activision have released a study that found that "highly integrated" ads in video games (as opposed to static ads) can "make players feel more positive about a product," according to this SFGate article. But relevance – and non-annoyance – is key to successful integration.

This Wall Street Journal
article on the same study points out that relevant in-game advertising
"enhances the realism of games." The author also expands on the study,
and writes that companies are beginning to put together rate-cards for
in-game ads.

I am just coming to grips with the stature that gaming has achieived. Robert A. Kotick, chairman and chief executive of Activision confirms its importance in the SFGate article:

"Here is this medium that has more consumption by males 18-34 than television today…"

This Wall Street Journal article reports on the trends that are affecting marketing as a business, and the new tactics and technologies that marketers are employing to reach their audiences.

One thing that stands out is the meteoric rise of video game advertising:

"Advertising in videogames is expected to jump to $875 million by 2008
from an estimated $186 million this year, according to Yankee Group, a
Boston-based research firm."

Check out this Hollywood Reporter article on the increasing popularity of advergames; the focus of the piece is on the recently launched "King Kong Jump" – a Pringles/King Kong movie-sponsored game that you can play here.

Advergaming isn’t a new idea. For my money – these games are a great idea – but still almost too simple – after a minute or so I basically lose interest. Looking forward to the future of more robust interactive  gaming brand experiences.

On a tangentially-related note, does anybody remember this classic flash snowball fight game from about 5 years ago? Still a good one.

Double Fusion just hired Yahoo!’s former GM of Games – Geoff Graber – to be their new CEO. And Mediapost is reporting that Double Fusion just received $10 million VC round as well. Gaming is big business folks!

On a related note, Yahoo! is reporting that a new Nielsen/Double Fusion study found that in-game advertising is a new, red hot brand advertising segment.

McKinney & Silver is behind an intricate and darkly-intriguing guerilla marketing campaign for the release of the new Audi A3. The "Art of the Heist" branding campaign is playing the drama out across blogs, forums, television spots, websites, intranet errors and event appearances – to promote Audi’s new hatchback model. As we’re a little late to the game, it is difficult to succinctly summarize each step of the ongoing saga, but the story centers around a former spy and a computer hacker that are
trying to track down evidence about a stolen work of art that was
planted in the computer systems of some new A3s. You can catch up at the Stolen A3 website as well as on Audi’s site.

This effort also coincides with the apparent upcoming release of a new computer game, "The Nisha Chronicles, Vol. 1." whose central character is one of the main "Art of the Heist" characters.

According to this Mediaweek report, citing a report by the Yankee Group, the in-game ad market will grow 640% by 2009 – from $118 million in 2004 to $875 million by 2009. Also, add a new term to the internet advertising lexicon: advergames – games built around a specific product.