GoFish Launches Youth-Oriented Advertising Network

GoFish announced the launch of its youth-oriented advertising network today, with a reach of 17.4 million users in the United States concentrated in  6-to-17-year-old age range. GoFish spoke at Virtual Worlds Fall on the Kids and Teen panel and spoke to the interest of the company in creating a network to leverage the large aggregate audience of youth-oriented virtual worlds that, individually, had smaller audiences. Alloy Media + Marketing has done the same, tying Zwinky and Gaia into a larger network, and GoFish is already working with Whyville, Cookie Jar Entertainment, and ROCKETON in addition to its many other non-virtual world partners, like the anchor property MiniClip.com.

“The number of new sites in the combined categories of Kids Entertainment and Teen Community grew nearly 50% from Q4 2006 to 2007,” says Tabreez Verjee, President of GoFish Corporation. “However, smaller sites do not always have the infrastructure to monetize their ever-growing reach, and that creates an opportunity for the GoFish Network and the sites to build mutually beneficial relationships.”

Current advertisers include Activision, AT&T Wireless, Build A Bear, Cartoon Network, Disney, Electronic Arts, Hewlett Packard, Kellogg’s, Konami, Lego, Mead Paper, Microsoft, Nintendo, Random House, Sony and Verizon Wireless among others--all marketers that could tie in well to the demographic of kids and teens virtual worlds.

“The GoFish Network has the ability to bring advertisers’ messages to hard-to-reach youth demos helping to ignite and grow brand loyalty. It is also an excellent way to reach co-viewing parents who share the web experience with their children,” says David Fisch, Vice-President of Publisher Development and Marketing Programs at GoFish. “We work closely with Publishers in our network to offer unique, immersive advertising opportunities in the online environments most popular with youth audiences such as games, video, virtual worlds, and other social media.”