It sounded like a corny idea for a marketing campaign when TurboTax teamed up with Zynga's popular online game FarmVille. After all, who would figure that gamers would choose to file their taxes with Intuit's TurboTax software just because someone offered them $30 in bonus "Farm Cash" on the popular Facebook game?
This little piggy really went to the market, though. Intuit estimates that 85 percent of initial respondents actually did click through a multipage process to visit TurboTax's home page. That 85 percent click-through rate is no chicken feed, people.
Intuit senior manager for digital marketing and integrated media Brian Hovis also noted that some gamers complained because they had already filed their taxes and were no longer eligible for the promotion. Some even wondered whether they could unfile their taxes, just so they could refile and collect the bonus virtual cash.
Clever digital marketers are gaming the system to integrate products and branding into the online video game experience. Other exhibitors at the San Francisco ad:tech digital marketing conference showed how they too are players in this new "advergames" concept.
Game & Buzz Factory, a social media campaign manager, game designer, and ad:tech exhibition floor exhibitor, conducted a 2011 online gaming study that revealed advergaming's potential high score.
The video game demographic are no longer teenage boys -- and a majority of them never were. The study found that 54 percent of digital marketing game players were women. The largest demographic plurality (45 percent) was in the 26-45 age range.
Legislative concerns are also rising around the practice, though. Last year, the U.S. Senate proposed the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011, which would prohibit the use of third party information collected from children under the age of 18.
You'll know it's a problem when your kids ask you to hurry up and file your federal or state income taxes so they can collect their bonus Farm Cash.
This article is part of Allvoices' series on ad:tech, the largest digital marketing and technology conferences and expositions. Check out allvoices.com/adtech for more of Allvoices' ad:tech San Francisco event coverage. This series is supported by ad:tech.
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