This entry is focused on branded entertainment in social gaming.

While branded content in Australia is a growing area across TV and most digital platforms, integration into social gaming still remains in its infancy.

Only a handful of brands have ventured into the space and the majority of these only from a paid media advertising perspective. Indeed, according to eMarketer analyst Paul Verna, industry standards and benchmarks for the media are yet to be fully established.

Examples of engaging and relevant branded content within gaming are few and far between.

Digital media networks consider the same rules of governance for displaying media to apply to social gaming brand integration. Like our domestic free to air TV channels, regulation around the levels of brand integration is largely self-policed, with the media networks looking to balance this with content integrity and audience appeal.

Striking this balance is also a key consideration for brand involvement, given the ease and speed at which online users can walk away from content.

This is even more pronounced for gamers – it’s a competitive space, where consumer expectations are higher than those of traditional media. Brands need to get their integration spot on to command engagement.

This campaign negated the need to ‘draw’ people to the content. Branded entertainment in gaming is about integrating smartly where our audience are already playing.

We created McDonald’s first social game in Australia - The Big Mac® Farm Challenge. But gamification stood at the heart of the distribution strategy as well as the way we delivered our message.

To recruit players, in an Australian media first, we incentivised Farmville players to earn Farmcash by completing the game via call to action in-game ads.

We also encouraged engagement amongst existing Facebook fans by driving rivalry and competition within the community.

We smashed our +2% target.

Brand tracking from the quarter’s communications, where the game was a key tactic, saw an unprecedented 10% uplift in “food I feel good about eating” and a 6% increase in the use of quality ingredients.

But did the game really engage our target?

Yes! Engagement levels were record breaking for the ad network:

- 1m real ingredient facts communicated

- 127,000 game plays

- Average engagement of 5.5'

- 67% of players returned

- 6% shared their scores via Facebook

- 81% of players within the ad-unit clicked through to the Facebook page