Habbo partners with Double Fusion

Habbo has announced an exclusive arrangement with in-game advertising firm Double Fusion as the sales agency for its virtual community Habbo.com.

There are currently Habbo communities in 32 countries on six continents.

Double Fusion will manage media sales and coordinate in-game, integrated marketing campaigns that position brands to Habbo.com's audience of 2.4 million unique visitors per month.

"Double Fusion has built a name and a reputation for itself among advertisers and agencies for delivering immersive and engaging brand experiences inside of virtual environments in games," CEO Jonathan Epstein told GamesIndustry.biz.

"The Habbo partnership represents our first, but not our only, expansion into what we view as the other side of the coin of gaming, which is virtual worlds."

Double Fusion is not moving away from traditional games, however, having recently announced an advertising deal for NCsoft's City of Heroes.

"It's just a natural extension of our business to move into virtual worlds," Epstein said.

Epstein praised Habbo's substantial reach as well as the ability to combine the benefits of time-based media with deep integration.

"We're very excited about virtual worlds and the new advanced online games because the communities continue to evolve, you have new people coming through, and you have live customer feedback that allows you to adjust and modify a marketing program in a way that continues to improve its performance," he said.

Unlike console games, which require sales projections, online games and virtual worlds let advertisers know exactly how many people they are going to get, Epstein noted.

Allowing users to interact with a brand in a virtual world requires marketers to be less rigorous with restrictions on how their logos are presented, but the trade-off - having users become brand ambassadors - is profound, he said.

Over 200 companies have already advertised on Habbo globally with a variety of marketing initiatives such as in-game billboards, contests, interstitials and instant-console messaging, customized brand rooms and sponsored quests.

Epstein was unable to discuss his company's involvement with another virtual world - Sony's Home online community - as he is under NDAs, but he did note a lot of publisher interest in being able to leverage marketing partnerships across games and the Home platform.

"We would be phenomenally interested in helping Sony and its partners monetise the Home environment," Epstein said.