Digital Marketing | Digital Strategy | This Digital World

Facebook Virtual Goods Revenue Just Tip of the Zuckerberg

The digital world often looks to Asia for trend and growth prediction and the developments in social media are no exception.  Because of local restrictions by governments on sites like Facebook, local social networks have sprung up and are big business.

According to a video created by Thomas Crampton of Ogilvy, which you can watch below, Facebook generated only $5M in virtual goods revenue (mainly from social games) compared to $87M by Chinese firm QQ, $100M by Mixi in Japan and $200M by Cyworld in South Korea.

Anyone in the social games industry already knows the potential for virtual goods revenue over the next few years, which is why Disney recently snapped up Playdom for $763M.

The question is whether the trends we are seeing in Asia with respect to buying virtual goods online, will hold true for Westerners.

Casual Gaming Crosses Into Food Retailing

 This story is a great example of how the worlds of online and offline are becoming increasingly intertwined.  Farmville, a social casual game played by 65 million people worldwide, has teamed up with Green Giant, vegetable makers to the masses (owned by Betty Crocker), to put Farmville cash coupon stickers on various products in 4,000 stores across North America.

The idea is that this virtual currency is of real value to the game players, who can use it to buy all sorts of things in the virtual game itself, so they will be more likely to buy these food items as a result.

It's a very interesting cross-over between online and retail marketing don't you think?