Feedback needed on sponsorship program
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
Hey IC community:
Recently we launched our day sponsor program, and Paradox Interactive stepped up to be the first sponsor.
We put their message in front of every single Icrontic page view (over 42,000 pageviews over the course of two days).
The end results?
17 people clicked out on those links.
That's, frankly, an embarrassingly bad number. It's horrible.
I'm confused, because we got a lot of community interaction in Paradox's high five thread, yet only 17 people clicked out to check out ShipSim.com (and a few of those weren't even community members - I think they were readers of our article content that had landed here from Google, based on stats)
Now, I'm asking you guys: Why is that?
What can we do better to make those kinds of messages more compelling? I want to be able to deliver better feedback to our sponsors, and I'm hoping you guys can help me crack this nut.
Thoughts?
Recently we launched our day sponsor program, and Paradox Interactive stepped up to be the first sponsor.
We put their message in front of every single Icrontic page view (over 42,000 pageviews over the course of two days).
The end results?
17 people clicked out on those links.
That's, frankly, an embarrassingly bad number. It's horrible.
I'm confused, because we got a lot of community interaction in Paradox's high five thread, yet only 17 people clicked out to check out ShipSim.com (and a few of those weren't even community members - I think they were readers of our article content that had landed here from Google, based on stats)
Now, I'm asking you guys: Why is that?
What can we do better to make those kinds of messages more compelling? I want to be able to deliver better feedback to our sponsors, and I'm hoping you guys can help me crack this nut.
Thoughts?
0
Comments
As a member of Icrontic Paradox is more on my radar than ever.
That, and I personally am not terribly interested in a ship sim at the moment. It is, however, more on my radar than it was, to mirror Cliff's sentiment.
But, in the same breath it is a Ship Simulator game. Marketing 101, you deliver your message to a place where it will best reach your target market. Sure we have a lot of gamers here but you can't just assume because someone plays computer games they will have interest in this particular type of game.
You cannot judge the success of this thing from that click through number alone and on this first case basis because I just don't think it was the proper item to market to this community.
A good step would be to figure out what people around here like and gather demographics. You need to be able to go to a videogame developer/publisher and say I have a community of X number of people where XX% play FPS videogames 10-15 hours a week. I bet they would be interested to get that community's feedback on the FPS game they have in the works, and i also would bet that the response would be far greater if the topic was geared towards the community.
Just an idea.
The other thing to notice is that we put an article about the boat sim up on the 16th and then did the sponsor thing on the 21st. The article included a vid for the game with no real game place included. See we have boats on the water, see we have environment around your boat, see we have boats that are effected by our environment. I think I clicked on the link just to see their web page but did not stick around.
It felt like all the bases were covered by the article, vid, and forum thread for me not to go their website unless that was the only way to get a demo of the game to screw around with.
The game might be interesting if I liked boats but I do not and it seems like most of us do not really care about boats. Granted I think there would of been more interest if it was known you could ram a cruise liner into Somalia pirates and then shoot an RPG off the deck into the night sky that exploded in fireworks that made a portrait of T-Pain, shortly followed by mermaids beaching themselves on the deck of said cruise liner. Then I might be interested.
Yup, as a seasoned internet user, I pretty much ignore all ads, Icrontic or not.
Same here. If the "sponsored by Paradox" banner thing at the top of the page was a link I didn't even know. Also the ship simulator isn't exactly something I'm interested in but I have looked over Lead and Gold which I can assure you I wouldn't have noticed if not for their sponsorship.
just my two cents...Icrontic is all about the multiplayer fighting/shooting games. Not weird simulators....
Huh? Are you serious? What about the constant TF2 matches? Shattered Horizon? The WoW guild? Alien Swarm?
Oh, and don't forget LFD and LFD2
If you're looking for something, you'll find it.
Civ matches? since when? This is new info for me...
and yes, WoW is a fighter game, an MMORPG but still. Ever played battlegrounds? It's very PVP oriented....
Board games? I guess if you're at ICHQ...
edit: and getting a sponsorship that gears towards that would prob get ALOT more then 17 clicks...
In response to the original topic, I just didn't find the prospect of a ship simulator to be very intriguing.
I'll say. At epic 2009 you saw every type of game, covering multiple genres. If you could play it, chances were there was someone there that was proficient in it.
Sure TF2 is a common thread for most folks, but beyond that people all had varied interests. I saw allot of people play Civilization. I overhead plenty of conversation about WOW. I got into a few good conversations about retro gaming.
I would be much more inclined to wait and click a link the forum thread then a header advert simply on the basis that as I read info from the thread I can open links in a new tab in the order that the information is presented so I can follow ideas and thought processes easily.
The high five thread put Paradox in my brain, though, kind of like how all that Saboteur coverage put Pandemic in my brain. Of course, you can't exactly track or market that, I suppose. :S
I've played it. The concept is really cool and they add a lot of humor into it but the graphics are about 7 years older then they should be...That's its only draw back though
Take a look at the register and reghardware.. Default layout & style day in day out.
But on the subsections when "sponsored".. the black background goes, replaced with an image of the sponsors product, the reghardware/register logo is adjoined with the sponsor and even changes from their red to the sponsors corporate colour. It's impact, it's their brand. Massive visual impact. Does it prevent the reader from reading the content as before ... no ... but damn you cannot miss the sponsor either. Sadly they don't have one today but I will update this thread once they do one at some point this week.
Sort the presentation out first and then the value can be found
I didn't really NZXT was a day sponsor until I was looking at active threads. There is a lot of room at the top of all the pages next to the IC logo that could have a sponsors image slammed on it or even loose the IC logo and cover that whole empty space with theirs. Then a short message with links. Unless you read where you normally expect no text you would miss the banner.
Make it bigger and put it some place where it is almost annoying. Right now it is so unobtrusive that it is too unobtrusive.
A click on the link to the sponsored thread could bring a frame of the sponsor website above the actual thread (e.g. see Google image search) If the visitor does not click somewhere in the frame of sponsor website, frame of the sponsor website shrinks to the top/side. I think this is acceptable.
THAT is what I would like to see. Except not a blue bird, the sponsor's logo and a brief that text that says "Sponsored By:". Simple, noticeable, always on the screen, not at all annoying for the reader.