FOOA: Future of Online Advertising Notes: Joel Greenberg, Electric Sheep

Here are my notes from the presentations by Joel Greenberg of Electric Sheep at the Future of Online Advertising conference. I will post my complete commentary plus audio files this weekend (there is a LOT of audio editing to do) so please grab the RSS Feed.

Joel's discussion centered around using virtual worlds for advertising. Mainly focused around Second Life. My notes:

• Begins by showing a demo of a CBS promo they did within Second Life.
• Virtual World medium is:
  – young (7 million registered users, 1 million monthly uniques)
  – viable
  – valuable
  – understandable
• Discusses the old time like compuserve and aol.
• Let's talk about sex - "all they are doing is having sex in second life"
• Notes different ways of advertising inside second life - federated media sells ads
• Mentions that Germany is the 2nd largest community in second life and the in-world advertising network out of germany is the biggest.
• Search within SL is growing - will we see SEO companies for this?
• Joel says that the events is one of the most important parts of virtual worlds
• Engagement is the thing that makes these virtual worlds a great opportunity for marketers
• Future trends:
  – lifelogging
  – better integration with the 2d web
  – larger audiences
  – more machismo
  – more advertising opps
  – opps for media planning
  – advertising standards
  – more consumer research