Business & Games: The Blog

Are you familiar with the author? I'm not and a quick google doesn't tell me much.

Hi Sven, The author is indeed remarkably invisible in Google. Some other search engines have showed us that he used to be a marketing manager at a small local radio station, and this book is his thesis at the marketing department at Zurich Uni. I've ordered the book, and we'll know in a few days what it holds up to :)

Perhaps I need googling lessons. If I plug in "Marolf Gerald", I get only one page with four returns... and they're not appreciably any different than the Amazon listing. If I plug in "Gerald, Marolf" I get... two more pages, more returns, and (surprise) more book listings. I don't get much of anything else. And from those and the Amazon listing it's apparent that he's likely only authored this one book. Now if I use Yahoo, there are more pages but they too appear to be mostly about this same book. The only useful thing I found is a lonely executive summary PDF which I assume you're using and which he wrote (I'd like to get a better sense of his credentials from other sources, after all, when I see a book about a subject I assume some level of relatively significant expertise already recognized in the field). Okay, so did anyone else notice that a whole paragraph is repeated in the PDF? If not, check the fourth and fifth page and the paragraphs starting with "In game advertising has a particularity...". I hope the book/thesis doesn't contain such glaring errors. As to the content itself, much of what he seems to be writing has been discussed on any number of blogs (including Ilya's AdLab). Second, I get the feeling he knows less than I and other non-expert bloggers about the potential of in-game advertising. Tony Walsh over on Clickable Culture has been railing against inappropriate ads placed in games for years. And I've taken the demographic info garnered and mashed it into JIT manufacturing in a long, well-linked blog entry. What is he going to say that couldn't be put on a blog for free? I'm glad you and Ilya are going to review this thing because I have serious doubts it's worth my money. I hope I'm wrong.

Apologies. I misread "invisible" as "visible".

Sven, This book is actually a thesis. As we know, a thesis as such if (obviously) unrelated to real world business experience, so I'll give the guy some credit there. Anyway, if he googles himself he'll probably show up here soon enough :) (would have contacted him myself if I could have found any contact details). Again, we'll see soon enough. It's in the mail...

I'm not sure I'd agree a thesis is necessarily unrelated to real world business (or any other kind) of experience. I consider that a stretch. Consequently, I'm not as ready to spot someone Experience Points when it comes to this topic. As you say, we'll apparently know soon enough if what is said is worth the relatively high price of admission (I guess the author doesn't think the Idea Virus approach is of any use to him).