I’m sure many of you have noticed Hasbro’s new, very popular, website Monopoly City Streets. Due to the fact that the online game is based on Google Maps and you have a worldwide choice of streets available to buy, this received a huge amount of attention very quickly. In fact, the demand for using the site was so popular that the site became unusable following its launch, since then they have fixed the server issues and relaunched.

Image credit: mtsofan (Flickr)

Anyway, what I found most interesting is the fact that a few brands seem to be using this for advertising themselves. Here’s a quote from Gartoo’s list of the top 20 UK properties on Monopoly City Streets:

“18 of these properties are owned by the game itself at the moment, although the Daily Telegraph and Press Association have managed to secure an expensive property each too. It’s possible this is part of a marketing campaign as it’s unlikely that they have built up a profile which can afford properties at these prices so quickly.”

Looking at the property prices for these I would agree that these profiles appear to have been setup from within the game. Vauxhall Bridge Road is £754,000,000 (owned by The Press Association) and Buckingham Palace Road is £910,000,000 (owned by The Daily Telegraph).

So how have these been placed? It’s clearly a very innovative way of branding for these companies, it would be interesting to see how involved Google are in this and if they are offering popular properties to advertisers or if it’s been done through Hasbro.

Advertising in this way appears to be something Google have experimented with in the past with Liverly.com (in a similar way to advertising on Second Life), I’d be interested to hear if anyone had some more information or thoughts on this?

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