Since we started our company in July 2006, we have seen rapid growth in the virtual world market. Originally, the market was largely conflated with Second Life and many companies ran pilot marketing projects in that world. More recently, we’ve seen a shift in attention from projects in Second Life to marketing engagements in larger web-based worlds like Gaia Online and Habbo Hotel as well as a large-scale movement by entertainment companies to create their own virtual worlds.

In serving our clients through this growth and evolution, we have - unsurprisingly - observed a strong desire for improved metrics to inform ROI calculations. Earlier this year, with that in mind, Millions of Us assembled a unique consortium of companies operating consumer-facing virtual worlds. Our shared goal: to work with Forrester Consulting to produce a study that surveyed a broad array of brands that had conducted virtual world marketing projects. This was intended to gain an accurate view of the state of the market and define areas for improvement.

The study which we are making available today to interested clients, prospects, and journalists is a strong first step in moving towards a unified set of standards and measurement by which clients can gauge the effectiveness of their activities in virtual worlds. We think many people will be interested in the study’s conclusions about opportunities for cross-channel tracking and building brand recognition through the distribution of virtual goods and the use of avatar customization.

Forrester made several clear recommendations regarding campaign planning and measurement; while still just a start, these stand to help grow budgets for virtual world campaigns.

Forrester’s Key Findings on virtual worlds are as follows:

This report highlights some key areas for improvement as well. With these in mind, I’d like to offer some thoughts of my own as a starting point for what I hope becomes an active and ongoing discussion:

Those interested in receiving a copy of the full study should contact Mat Small at mat@millionsofus.com .  Link to the press release here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Reuben's Thoughts (twitter: reubstock), Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.