MTV’s Game Plan & The Kids’ Rejection Of Ads

In the Feb 18 08 issue of Business Week, the magazine places two related articles back to back - to good effect. The first is an article that studies the moves by MTV to get into the gaming business. Gaming is where the eyeballs are these days MTV believes and that’s where they can therefore sell ads:

No Old Media company has placed a more far-reaching bet on gaming. MTVN operates more than 5,000 mobile, console, and online games and virtual worlds—many of them based on TV shows such as MTV’s The Real World and Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants.

…MTVN doesn’t break out its gaming ad revenues but says it has signed up dozens of advertisers… What started as a “test” for Pepsi two years ago is a growing part of its ad strategy, says John Vail, director of interactive marketing for Pepsi-Cola North America. “We can count on that audience being baked-in,” says Vail. “If they are engaged with us in the virtual world, we know they will be engaged with our products in the real world.”

But if you consider BW’s next article, you wonder if the move is going to be that successful. The youth seem to be avoiding and even rejecting the ads on social networks like MySpace:

The MySpace generation may be getting annoyed with ads and a bit bored with profile pages. …Many of the people who hang out on MySpace, Facebook, and other sites pay little to no attention to the ads because they’re more interested in kibitzing with their friends… More aggressive ad programs can lead to more frustrated users. Ryan Lake, 34, just left MySpace because of the ads. “There are so many, and they are getting more and more obtrusive,” he says.

Interesting read considering we’re supposed to be moving into the world of free with everthing being paid for by advertising.

Generation MySpace Is Getting Fed Up
The Game’s the Thing at MTV Networks