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Online Gaming to Provide Rich and Diverse Marketing Opportunities for Internet Service Providers, Report Concludes

Broadband service providers have a ripe opportunity to leverage the exploding popularity of massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) in order to launch innovative marketing platforms and capture new advertising revenue according to a new report by Pike & Fischer.

In the report, P&F forecasts that video game advertising in the United States will reach an annual $1.4 billion by 2013. This creates an opportunity for cable operators, telephone companies and wireless service providers to help advertisers maximize the effectiveness of their promotions in whole new ways.

In addition, many of these online games, such as the wildly popular "World of Warcraft," have spawned massive social networking communities, notes P&F senior analyst Tim Deal.

"These communities are highly effective in getting users to interact online outside of the game world," said Deal, "and they serve to create a thriving ecosystem around a particular online gaming platform. This ecosystem has created both unheralded revenue opportunities as well as licensing and intellectual property concerns."

Furthermore, Internet service providers will face a variety of other prospects for capitalizing on gaming-related revenue, Deal says. They could, for example, offer specialized high-bandwidth packages, co-branded Web 2.0 templates and applications, or launch proprietary Internet voice services for gamers.

The report: "Broadband Enabled Gaming Environments," also includes five-year revenue forecasts for the U.S. online gaming market, an overview of the key players in the multiplayer gaming world, and an in-depth analysis of the "World of Warcraft" gaming platform and its related user-community.

The report is priced at $699 and is available for purchase at . For analyst commentary or to request a briefing, contact Tim Deal at / 301-576-4096 / tdeal@pf.com.

For information about Pike & Fischer's Broadband Advisory Services, visit or contact Jonathan Wentworth Ping at 973-718-4703 / jping@pf.com.