The stock market crashed again today, with the Dow falling 2.49 percent and the Nasdaq losing an even more worrisome 3.01 percent. But a new report predicts that lots of money will still be spent on ads in social games, with marketers pumping in bigger sums this year and in 2011.
eMarketer’s Clark Fredricksen wrote earlier, "eMarketer expects that marketers will spend $220 million worldwide to advertise in social games and social applications in 2010, rising to $293 million in 2011. These figures do not include ads within mobile applications."
That works out to a 20 percent increase between 2009 and 2010, and a 33 percent increase between 2010 and 2011. Which isn’t at all bad.
What’s more, Fredricksen added, "eMarketer’s estimates may end up being conservative as the social game business increases its footprint. . . . [T]he large audience of games such as Zynga’s Farmville is attracting advertiser attention."
So however everyone’s 401(k)s are doing, it looks like folks in the social gaming industry have something to look forward to, at least. And by extension, that’s probably good news for both Facebook and Google (since all signs point to Google trying to enter this field).
On that note, Google did beat the Dow by a little bit today, dropping just 2.38 percent.