The Money Flow

Posted on October 17, 2006
Filed Under Commercial Trends, European Web 2.0 |

Proctor and Gamble ….is running a contest for Crest Whitestrips that involves 20 different colleges and universities. The four schools that have the most students join the “Smile State” group will earn a free on-campus concert by an up-and-coming artist (only for members of the group, of course)

Joining the Party, Eager to Make Friends - New York Times

This is one of the most interesting articles yet on how Facebook and MySpace are being overtly monetised by advertisers.

I have a little to add. Advertisers are not only doing it overtly, as we know. Recently I got chatting to an ad manager at one of Holland’s leading insurance companies and he acknowledged he has teams operating on these kind of sites all day long trying to wrest their attention away from each other and towards his company.

Part of the benefit for insurers is they go straight to the client whereas historically they’ve worked through brokers - so no broker fees, and you capture young people who have a lifetime to pay out on different insurance products.

Also from Holland we have Eccky, a team of avatars that live on a website and turn up on packaging in shops. Eccky, more below, has a partnership with MSN to go global.

Eccky is like Second Life except more aggressively commercial.

Dutch advertisers are able to transit between the virtual and real world with ease thanks to Eccky, running promotions in shops that carry over into the virtual world where people can meet and have an eccky together - a bit like having a baby. Once you’ve had an eccky you have to care for it so you and your virtual partner have to communicate - step up to the plate MSN and the local mobile phone company.

Eccky-fever translates into shopping opportunities too. off you go down to the shop with and buy the H&M branded eccky Flirt and Fashion diary to teach yourself how to virtually flirt. Doritos also did a cross reality campaign with eccky, opening up possibilities for winning discounts in eccky life and bringing them to shops. Oh, and Ecckys are covered under virtual insurance policies (unconnected to the one I spoke to at Picnic 06).

Eccky also connects people via IM and mobile text so discount shopping and cross promotion apart it has great revenue potential.

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