Zynga is piloting a project on CityVille that lets players refill their energy bar by interacting with an advertising. Sponsors in the trial project, dubbed Reward Advertising, include Coca-Cola, MasterCard and the 20th Century Fox film 'What’s Your Number?', according to eConsultancy.
The ads run when a player is low on energy. They range from the offer to watch the film trailer or to complete a MasterCard survey.
This is the latest Zynga virtual goods-advertising experiment. Last year, Capital One appeared simultaneously in CityVille, FarmVille and The Pioneer Trail–a first according to the companies. Players were able to interact with the goat from Capital One's commercials, which is being introduced in both games as one of the in-game incentives. Zynga plans to roll out similar Reward Advertising on FarmVille and Empire & Allies soon, eConsultancy says.
Facebook's Games Discovery
Module Facebook is also tinkering with its highly-lucrative gaming model: it has reintroduced the "Discover New Games" module in its right sidebar, Inside Facebook reports. The Discover New Games module highlights games a user’s friend is playing or that are otherwise popular. What is different this time is that it features a larger game thumbnail instead of their friends’ profile pictures.
In addition, the Facebook developers blog said, gamers will see stories that list games their friends are playing the most. "We will continue to refine the design of these stories based on performance."
