Guinness World Records Promotes Gaming Book on Xbox Live

Guinness World Records has teamed up with Xbox Live to promote the launch of its new “Gamer’s Edition” records book, which features records and high scores from the world of video gaming.

An exclusive U.K. microsite on the Xbox Live platform, known as a ‘branded destination,’ will offer free downloadable content including customizable backgrounds. The site also features footage from the book’s official launch on Wednesday, at which top gamers attempted to beat world record scores at various games, including Xbox titles Guitar Hero and Halo 3. Banners on the Xbox Live home screen will drive traffic through to the site.

“It’s essentially no different from a normal Web-based microsite; it’s just hosted in the Xbox environment,” said Jeff Pabst, business development manager at Xbox. “The branded destinations allow us to do just about anything an advertiser wants in terms of delivering content. We can offer audio, images, downloads and video, all in high definition.”

Although only accessible through the Xbox gaming console, this is not quite in-game advertising as we know it. Pabst preferred to label it as “around game” or “pre-game” advertising. As a result, the targeting capabilities suffer in some ways since advertisers cannot target users by game genre, for example.

“The targeting on this system is not quite as robust as with in-game advertising, but we can still target by language, region, and demographic,” he said.

When users sign up for an Xbox live account however, they are required to enter certain data such as name and address. In theory, this would enable ads to be specifically targeted to individuals, based on their location, gender, and other factors.

“We’re not currently targeting based on individual user data, but it’s still early days, and we’re looking at how we want to evolve the system,” said Pabst. “At present we target mainly by demographic, and looking at the lifestyle and interests of the average video gamer. For a product such as the Guinness Book of World Records Gamer’s Edition, it’s a perfect environment.”

Because it enables high definition video, the platform is well suited to movie advertising. Previous branded destinations have been created for 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros., to promote the release of films such as “Alien vs. Predator” and “Beowulf.”

The six-figure campaign was booked by Davies Media. A wider multimedia campaign for the book launched Friday.