In two days (Saturday), Israelis will celebrate one of the most important holidays in the Jewish religion – Passover.

To those of you who are not very familiar with the Jewish customs, this holiday represent the freedom of the Jews, leaving slavery in Egypt and establishing our own country – Israel.

Anyways, we always use this opportunity to send our wishes to our family and friends… So to all of our readers from abroad:

“May all your dreams will come true!

May only happiness will surround you…

Wishing you the best of luck

Enjoy your holiday and come back…

Cheers!”

I just came back from the com.vention which is considered to be the biggest Hi-Tech convention in Israel.  The big question (as always) was how to earn money on the web… For the time being God and Google have the answers…

Apparently, Google is now the only efficient tool as the advertiser gets real people coming to the site and the banners according to the adertisers are yesterday’s news… Moreover, aside the two biggest sites, all the other sites in the leading top 20 sites are around being break-even or even losing money!

If you think about it, the web is confronting the exact same problem TV has… banners just like TV ads are good for branding (but not as good…) and 1.7% on average is clicking them…

No wonder advertisers in Israel as well as in any other country prefer to spend their budgets at Google.

But wait a second, Google just leads to other sites, so if Google is making all the money, and the other sites are producing all the content, then no doubt this model is very very fragile… or to use Yossarian’s own insight, we have here a classic case of Catch 22.

We know from other fields in life the shaky models are not here to stay, therefore, I expect to see a great commotion in the internet field shaking Google’s hegemony sooner than we expect.

God only knows how…

By: danjw96

Advergames (short code for advertising games) are games which were designed for one purpose –   to advertise something while playing a game… and it seems like a very efficient way to do that!

Is that so? The advergame industry is expected to generate $312.2 million by 2009, up from $83.6 million in 2004, according to research firm Yankee Group. And we do see a shift in the interest of advertisers to move into this new field.

One of the best examples I’ve seen so far was done by “The California Milk Processor Board” in attempt to encourage the Americans to drink more milk (here). Beautiful work!

In brand-impact studies, associating a brand with the fun of gaming is known to lift brand metrics such as brand awareness, message association and purchase intent.  

In this particular case people were interacting with the milk game for 45 minutes!!! (Instead of a lame 30 sec spot…)Here are some general industry statistics, just to show you the potential:

§  50% of play advergame for an average of 25 minutes.

§  90% of players who receive a challenge from a friend play the game and respond back with their score or statistics.

§  According to the Entertainment Software Assn., 42% of gamers say they play online games one or more hours per week.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Even the Israeli advertisers are beginning to explore the potential of this medium. Carlsberg has launched a mini-site dedicated to Euro 2008 with some cool videos and games (here) (developed by Israeli firm E-Dologic - Respect!)

Soon we will provide some really exciting news in this field… more to expect!

Cheers!