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« RENT ME | Main | Believing the Fake Numbers »

October 25, 2006

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» How to Advertise in Second Life from Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog
by: Ilya Vedrashko Second Life resident Prokofy Neva responds to a Media Post article Second Life Optimization with his own excellent list of 20 do's and dont's of advertising in the virtual world (and a more detailed discussion of the... [Read More]

Comments

David Berkowitz

Wow, this is one thorough dissection. I'll defer to you on the facts, though I still maintain some differences of opinion. For instance, why would big brands follow their customers into the virtual world? These brands are trying to reach customers wherever they are, virtual worlds included. And, for people like me who are relatively new to virtual worlds (or related channels like MMORPGs), brands are like comfort food - the familiar touches of reality that make the new experience easier to digest.

Thanks for reading and offering such a thoughtful critique.

Prokofy Neva

Hi, thanks for stopping by. I've read enough pieces like yours, David, that I felt I finally had to sit down and dissect the points -- it wasn't so much to single you out.

I didn't imagine that big brands should follow their customers into virtual worlds; they *themselves* use that very expression and a number have been on the record lately saying they are doing just that. I guess they feel that subscriptions of newspapers are falling off; television viewing is falling off; so they have to follow their customers to where they spend time?

Your comment about the familiarity and comfort food is very interesting. I suppose the first round of users of the virtual world of SL had a completely different set of comfort foods and expectations. For them, MMORPGs with their flying, their wings, their wierd space vehicles, their laser swords, etc. were the comfort talismans they wanted to see in SL.

For someone completely unused to MMORPGs (and I'm in that category as I've never played a single one of them for more than the five minutes it takes to be killed lol), other kinds of comfort things have been involved. I think for those of us coming from the Sims Online and There, it literally *was* food items that you could sit and eat -- these were big parts of TSO intregal to the game and to There for the visuals. So they tended to reproduce those things in SL.

I guess the branded items of sneakers and cars are going to be the familiar icons for the next wave as you say, interesting point.

Prokofy Neva

BTW, I did confirm that Reeboks is in the SEARCH PlACES but with no description, maybe they just didn't figure out how to use the land tools yet.

Aliasi Stonebender

This is something with which I can agree with you, Prok.

It's not billboards that are bad; it's stupid billboards that aren't deployed intelligently. Companies have slowly been learning this on the web - annoying "Punch the Monkey" adbanners that hijack the computer or play sounds or whatever just get people to turn off Javascript or use an adblocker; ads that display things that might possibly be of use, on the other hand, get through.

Similarly, while "Impeach Bush" or Mr. Lee's Hong Kong are of limited usefulness, one could, say, post a billboard by a well-trafficked clothing store that would mostly show clothing ads, or accessories, or other things a clothes-shopper might care about. MetaAdverse failed at this, as I recall - they were more like the standard banner-ad gristmill, just in SL.

Robbie Kiama

Wow,

really great post. Will give it to my colleagues and friends to read. Lots of info was very new to me about how you compare search engine optimization to SL optimization. Great.

Also my question would be- what is wrong with these companies(reuters, reebok and alike ) Somebody who is really experienced in SL are preparing SIM's and all build's for these companies - so why don't they do the whole optimization work???

Maybe you covered it and I simply missed it?

Prokofy Neva

Robbie, I'm not sure I understand your question. Perhaps you're saying that if these big corporations hired these experienced local builders, why don't they have "optimalization"?

But all those ideas to change things like how SEARCH works or how the user interface works don't depend on these builders, as connected as they are. They are residents. It's a user-made world.

The game-gods, the Lindens don't make the inner world, they make the software for the shell of the world. That includes the things like user interface and search engines. So only they could be "optimalizing" it. Perhaps if they hear enough screeching from companies who laid out 6-figure ad campaigns, they'll prioritize it better.

Randal Oulton

Missing one key point -- search engine in SL sucks. No one would accept such a search engine anywhere else on the web.

Prokofy Neva

Well, yeah, I know it's the received wisdom that "the search engine sucks". But it actually doesn't suck in the way people imagine. That is, it sucks if you compare it to Google. It's primitive.

However, it gives most inworld businesses 60-80 percent of their sales by all accounts -- and I'm here to testify that it easily gives me 60 percent of all completed rentals. Why? because it can find the word "rentals" and turn up up a list to browse.

How will that list be arranged? By the most clicked, like on Google? No, but maybe that's a good thing, because Google only tells you what other people clicked -- and that it is clicked on merely because it was clicked (and turns up Wikipedia a lot, which can often be a corrupted and biased source).

What the inworld search does is turn up a list that you can sort by TRAFFIC. And that's something that various outworld developers want to get rid of it. They curiously always seem to be clawing at any successes inworld businesses have and want to remove these advantages. They sneer that it is "gamed". Well, yes, but...the real problem is that it just doesn't show them to be the powerful entities they are in RL, because home-grown businesses have more visitors to their properties than outworld businesses, even with big names. They simply don't have the community, socializing, and content that people want in a virtual world.

So a search, even primitive, that can turn up a word like "rentals" and show the top trafficked rentals offices or properties then turns up a useful thing: properties or offices that actuallly have lots of people on them. That means they already have customers and traffic.

It's fashionable among the elite to sneer at traffic merely because of the camp-chair problem and the top 20.

But when you combine search and traffic together, traffic works to sort search in meaningful ways. That means that a newbies community with 1000 traffic on it can stand out as a successful rentals community, even if it doesn't use camp chairs or gimmicks such as to get 20,000 (which I don't).

Most inworld businesses rely more on search, which costs $30 and just seems to sort better, than classifieds, which costs $50 and just seems to work worse -- precisely because it doesn't have traffic to order it, but only the price tag of the ad itself -- and that is only a marker for how much somebody spent on their ad, not necessarily their worth.

Search combined with traffic make sales work -- search alone or traffic alone may be frustrating for some, but combined, they are highly useful. This is a fact often overlooked.

I'm really leaning toward saying search is not broken, nor is traffic, and Lindens and their dev pals need to keep their paws off it. It works to help businesses succeed inworld. Do not fix it if it is not broken, really. Whatever new thing that might be more like google should still retain the ability to sort *WITH* traffic ratings along side and traffic, even if someone the Lindens grab at it to de-game it, should still sort beyond popular places.

If other businesses outworld aren't getting it to work for them, they should first make sure they have put themselves in SEARCH. Some of them are too clueless to realize that unless they write a description with their name on it and check off the box, they don't go in automatically. It isn't like a website, no.

They could also work at their traffic in genuine ways.

It's fashionable in blogs and news articles to claim "Reebok" isn't in the list. But it is. Traffic: 307. No problem finding it. You do have to check off the box for "mature" to make sure it shows up -- it's in a mature region.
These are meaningless distinctions sometimes, M & PG.

Now, a search requiring that much explanation and toggling, that's clunky, to be sure. But not after five minutes of learning it.

SL isn't the web. In fact, the more it tries to fly around trying to mimic the web the more it looks stupid. It's better as an integral world.

We've had long long debates about search and how to make it work. As we can see, people like Cristiano only make glorified URL suggestion lists, directories, which they clear manually one by one. Some others like the SL 411 people tried making searches inworld connected to Internet webpage databases. All of these suffer from lack of avatar participation -- because you cannot just scrape every list and parcel of land just like that (and I think that's a good thing). People don't want to participate in search-making efforts that are usually run not as real public services but as this or that bid to enhance reputation or make money by scraping data. Instead, people use picks, world of mouth, classifieds of course -- and they check off the $30 box. Works fine.

Yeah, I know that people like Mark Barrett just want to scrape all the data they can get their hands on, but it only benefits a few who grab it and exploit it at this point, and doesn't benefit the public in the ways they imagine.

The question is, what is search FOR? to find things, not to prove technical points about kinship to the web. Are people finding things in SL? Yes and no. Many people do find things and thrive. Others, especially new, can't find things because what they really want is socializing and hand-holding, not finding. That won't happen until the whole newbie/help/orientation industry gets outsourced or bid to third-parties to work on for profit or non-profit.

Errol

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jason rudd

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BurghMike3V

This is great stuff! I'm fairly new to SL, but have spent quiet a bit of time in RLC promoting events etc.

I'm totally fascintated by the whole concept of virtual worlds (where else can I dance the night away in a 'nightclub' while actually sitting at home in my pajamas?)and find the thriving economy of SL to be intriguing.

Keep up the good work!

To read about our unique perspective on the Virtual Villages go to www.virtualvillagevoices.com

SqueezeOne Pow

I'd be down to see billboards if they were regulated so they worked like RL billboards as far as how they looked and how big they could be.

However, that would also mean more roads. I would love to see that, too.

I would say, however, that RL advertising in SL is silly and annoying. I don't give a shit about Nissan or Reebok when I'm online. I already get innundated with mainstream advertising when I'm ANYWHERE...whether it be in the real world or even on the regular internet. I don't give a shit if the "fit is go" when I'm reading the Onion. Why should I give a shit when I log into SL?

The one good thing about SL is how much of an equalizer it is (or can be). People actually have a chance to have as much footing as corporations when it comes to showing their creativity and passing it along to interested people. This is a paradigm that won't be there for long anyway so I don't see why we should rush to end it.

Let them use PS3's "Home" for mainstream advertising control.

HEC Hotshot

Very interesting article. I agree that huge billboards are unpleasant in RL and SL. We've set up an island for Real Life and SL companies to advertise and sell stuff. We have an Exhibition Hall for Real Life companies to get into Second Life cheaply and easily. Their adverts are contained within rented booths so are not bill boarded everywhere.
Getting good traffic too, with lots of hits to RL websites.
www.globalinkjapan.com

LINKBUILDING

great work

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I'm totally fascintated by the whole concept of virtual worlds (where else can I dance the night away in a 'nightclub' while actually sitting at home in my pajamas?)and find the thriving economy of SL to be intriguing.

Agnetha Vuckovic

" Here again, I'm puzzled why DavidBen isn't getting that we already have this. It's called "point-to-point teleportation". You press on the SEARCH or CLASSIFIED ad, and on the bottom on the right hand side it says TELEPORT and you go there instantly. "


A point of contention here. This is something I wish WOULD happen. But all too often, a search for a specific item gets you a TP landmark 'somewhere' in the store and you then spend half an hour not finding what you want. Quite why Classifieds are not linked in to the ability in the 'All' section to find the specific location of an item is beyond me.

Prokofy Neva

As you must know, you can now go to a parcel, then pull up SEARCH ALL, and then in the search results find GO TO next to every single item on that sim set to sale. So if a search result is produced from SEARCH ALL, in fact next to that item will be a GO TO for an instant teleport.

That means that even if you first teleported on the basis of a classified, once there, you can pull up search/all and search for that particular sim's name and find the GOTO. It really isn't that big a deal.

Two searches is exactly the sort of behaviour you perform on Google without realizing it, or feeling you've been burdened.

It's probably too burdensome for the system to have classifieds also have a GO TO, but I think the purpose of a store would be defeated if every search leads to pinprick finds. Like the concept of hubs of transportation, the idea of having you land at a common entrance is to have you browse and perhaps buy more.

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tinggi badan

It's all in the avatars and the groups. It's not in the yellow pages.

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Advertising in Second Life is an auspicious design for a Motel. Nice work..!

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Outstanding work for media and advertisement. David Berkowitz is one of the famous strategic planner.

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This is where we are going. The world will be made with imagination and it will be only virtual. There will be virtual people, life, job and even advertisment for companies which are only virtual.

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Billboards are fine -- we need some regulations to get them out of our prime waterfront views and back up on the roadsides, and they need to do stuff like deliver movie trailers or Nissan cars or samples of stuff like t-shirts in order to have a new-fangled Second Life.

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