Hun-Speak

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January 14, 2001 -- Gaming Networks: Condition Critical
Part I: It's the Ads, Stupid

Gamefan: RIP. Gamecenter Alliance: DOA. UGO: cutting back. eFront: running low on cash. What's a webmaster to do? Most every gaming webmaster is griping about the gravy train coming screeching to a sudden and rather violent halt.

To a certain extent, I can empathize with them. Most are not businessmen by any stretch of the imagination, so this is a rather cold, unexpected dose of reality. It can't be fun to wake up one morning to find out that the funding for your site is suddenly gone.

However, everyone should have been able to see this was coming. The bottom fell out of the dot com market as investors slowly regained lucidity long enough to realize that they shouldn't throw their money at the mess that is the average gaming network. It's no longer enough to throw around buzzwords like "ebusiness" or some similar garbage and expect investors to swoon. You need a viable business model. And, given the demise of far too many dot com companies recently, it had better be a good one.

How did I know that the gaming networks were in trouble even without looking at their books? Simple: look at the product. There are far too many websites with the exact same news. There are far too many websites that only do news and offer little along the lines of original content. Everybody and his dog has a gaming website (even I do!), and networks were adding these sites like mad as they sought to get more ad views everywhere possible.

Look at the ads themselves. It's been a long time since I've seen an ad on a gaming website that I've been even vaguely inclined to click on. The Gamespy network ads are mainly for the various sites under their umbrella. I have no idea how they make money doing that. Many of the ad companies' mottos (and UGO is one of the main offenders here) seem to mirror a review of a Spinal Tap album, "swimming in a sea of retarded sexuality." The theory must be that if you put enough partially clad women on a banner, someone is bound to click on it.

Add to that the Doubleclick fiasco, where the company used cookies to track users as they went from site to site, without their permission of course. Privacy advocates went justifiably apoplectic about it. Thankfully they seem to have changed their policies, but can anyone really be sure?

The latest trend is the infamous pop-up ad that manages to annoy you further. The theory seems to be that if it is good for the porn industry, doggone it, it's good for everyone! It's this simple: I just won't visit sites that use them, no matter how valuable the content is, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that sentiment.

Some have marveled at the fact that people are willing to tolerate a lot of ads in magazines but not on websites. For example, my PC Magazine (which I've been subscribing to for at least a decade now) has tons of ads. Granted, some of them DO annoy me. I spend the first five minutes yanking out all the inserts after I get it. But I think the main reason it doesn't annoy me is because the ads have products that might actually appeal to me! What a novel concept!

I think that's one sure-fire way to get people to click on ads: make them relevant! And no, Doubleclick, that doesn't mean you need to spy on me. Do you need a degree in marketing to know what the demographic of the average gaming site is? I would hope not! How about an ad offering a screaming deal on the latest video or audio card? How ads for about the latest and greatest shooters? How about making ads so I can tell right away that I'm clicking for more information on a digital camera and not a soft porn video? Thankfully, things have improved recently in this area, but they've still got a long ways to go.

I've got a lot more to say on this subject, but I'll leave that for a coming column. Stay tuned.