Games or advergames have proven an excellent way to engage with audiences. With more people now spending time online than watching TV, the increase of broadband and the growing appeal of social groups, video and games online, branded entertainment looks like a great avenue online, writes Andrew Azorbo.

Using entertainment to build brands and market products has been fairly common place within the mass medium of television. The internet has been more known for using the realm of short viral clips that spread through social groups and even other experiments in short films, animations and clips. Games, or advergames, have proven an excellent way to engage with audiences and so with more people now spending time online than watching TV, the increase of broadband and the growing appeal of social groups, video and games online, branded entertainment looks like a great avenue online.

To enable your brand and product reach a larger audience here are eleven reasons why branded entertainment could work for you:

• Branded entertainment helps you create stronger and more loyal communities that keep coming back for more, time after time.
• By increasing addictiveness of your site, you keep your visitors hooked many times longer than the average site.
• You can boost your brand building by developing a strong positive association with branded entertainment.
• Branded entertainment helps you increase website traffic by viral marketing, word of mouth and placements on co-operative websites.
• It enables you to develop groups of advocates that actually promote your brand on their own accord.
• Appealing branded entertainment helps with search engine optimisation if planned well as you get more inbound links from external sites.
• Branded entertainment can provide you with an additional means of added revenue using premium content or advertising or even as an add-on to something else.
• It helps you delivers higher brand exposure through prolonged and increased stay when users interact with your branded entertainment content.
• It allows for promotional tie-ins with other parts of your company and marketing initiatives.
• It assists in collecting large user lists you can use to reconnect with your audience repeatedly.
• You can cut through the clutter and get your message seen as users actively seek out your branded entertainment.
• Like any other piece of entertainment the creative aspect is very important but the internet allows us to add measurable data and to get a very quick response for ROI.

You'll need to be very intimate with your target market and their tastes but the rewards could be exponential if done well.

For full details and a comprehensive whitepaper report please visit Branded Entertainment Whitepaper.

About the author
Andrew Azorbo works for AzACreations.