While today's Ad:Tech conference panel "Gamer Nation" (link) offered little in the way of news to those of us familiar with the evolving relationship between game developers and advertisers, it did cover a decent amount of ground and I thought a brief discussion might be helpful. It's easy to forget how entrenched in a subject you can be and forget the fact that most people don't follow it so closely. What follows is a hodgepodge of data from both the panel and yours truly.

In- and around-game advertisements are a small business that pretty much everyone predicts will continue to grow for the following reasons:

1. Games are a great way to interact with potential customers.
2. Game playing comes at the expense of TV viewing (but not always).
3. Ads offer an additional revenue stream for developers and help certain areas of the market (like casual games) tap into completely new business models.

According to eMarketer, in-game ads will be worth $1.9 billion by 2011, up from $1 billion today (link).

IGN's David White said the average console gamer plays some 11 hours each week, nearly double the 6 hours spent by PCplayers. I'm realizing now that he didn't offer any data on the degree of overlap between those populations, unfortunately, but they're still useful. The average massively-multiplayer online game (think World of Warcraft) player spends 22 hours with such games each week.

The killer stat: some 344 million unique users visited game-related web sites during March 2007. That's fully 45 percent of all Internet users (!!!).

As Sharon Wienbar of Scale Venture partners pointed out, games are widely available to people regardless of age or gender. From Club Penguin to the Nintendo DS, game consoles and casuals on the PC, you can play at any point during your life (and increasingly via the Internet).

Some of the most successful examples of branded games include America's Army (link), Burger King's three Xbox games (link), and Microsoft's work with Cadillac to bring branded automobiles to the game Project Gotham Racing 3 (link).

Keep in mind, though, that a video game does not represent a brand strategy or campaign in itself, Ms. Wienbar said. They can, however, be integral parts of larger marketing efforts.

According to Microsoft's Chuck Frizelle, marketers need to come forth with their own definitions for success with an in- or around-game campaign. Some 300,000 gamers downloaded the Cadillac expansion for PGR 3, he said, resulting in Cadillac calling it the cheapest test-drive program they'd ever done. Burger King, meanwhile, went on to sell over 3 million of its branded Xbox games.

Seems to me that the key here is communication. As marketers you need to communicate with game developers, publishers, and network operators, set realistic goals, and watch the results come in.