Scratchpad: Targeting the Avatar

Harvard Business Review is working on an article due June that considers the opportunities of advertising that targets the avatar instead of the player behind the computer. Highlights (verbatim):

-- The intensity of the experience makes an avatar "not a puppet but a projection" of some aspect of the creator’s self, says Philip Rosedale, the founder and CEO of Linden Lab, the company that produces Second Life.

-- Avatars can influence purchasing decisions or, at the very least, offer insights into their creators' tastes. Simply observing how inhabitants of a virtual world use a particular type of product or choose, say, their virtual vacation destinations can generate valuable information.

-- Companies may also be able to market directly to avatars in their virtual worlds, persuading them to, in effect, purchase real-world goods for their creators, just as those creators buy virtual-world paraphernalia for them.

-- Marketers may even discover ways to sell to avatars after they accompany their creators back to the real world.


Paul Hemp, Harvard Business Review Online, "The Avatar as Consumer".