Free online games see sharp increase

comScore data released this week showed online casual gaming has reached 86 million users in 2008, an increase of 27% year over year. Additionally, the time individual users spend on gaming sites increased 42%.

Casual gaming is the category where Yahoo is definitely king, with 19.5 million unique visits in December, a 20% increase over 2007 and 4 million visits more than second place EA Online, and 6 million more than Disney Games, which holds third place.

Edward Hunter, comScore's Director of Gaming Solutions said "Not only have consumers turned to outlets such as gaming to take their minds off the economy, but as they curtail their discretionary gaming-related purchases they are turning to free alternatives."

Because users are opting to play ad-supported games, it is not surprising that the ad market in this sector is booming. Some 8.6 billion ads were viewed in 2008 at a stable 127 ads per viewer, a nearly 30% overall increase over 2007. This is attributed to a reduction to what is known as ad clutter, or the amount of display ads per page view, which decreased 17%.