Clickz: Games Pop Up in Ads

If I find myself playing a pop-up ad game, I get a pen and start stabbing my hand. Discipline has never been my strongest suit, but there are certain evils in this world that you just have to fight - crack cocaine, McDonalds and now addictive Flash pop-up games.

Anyhow, it appears that I'm not alone in occasionally getting dragged into the evil world of cartoon characters. According to Matthew Shapiro of Dreamam Ltd, a company that makes these games, these ads are achieving click through rate of 12-15%. (These figures may be misleading as interaction with these games often automatically "kicks" the user through to the website, without the user actually deliberately "clicking" through to the site.) Mr. Shapiro also claims that these ads lead to high purchase conversion rates.

Hate them, or hate them more, if these figures are anywhere close to accurate, advertisers will find this format increasingly hard to ignore. Obviously much more data is required on this front, but early indications do suggest that we are likely to see a substantial rise in the use of this ad/game format. God help us all.