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Online ad spending in the UK increased by 14.4% in 2011, representing £687M additional spending. According to the IAB and PwC advertising expenditure report released earlier this year, spending has increased across all forms of online advertising, including mobile, social media, and video.

The online channel’s growth is due to innovations in delivering branding messages through relevant and engaging content. Online content producers and domain owners are constantly working to provide richer experiences for users with greater cut-through. Mobile, social media, and video allow for consistent and pervasive campaigns, which invite users to interact with a brand or product in tailored ways. From delivering coupons in mobile formats so they can be used in-store, to piquing interest in a movie release through advergames, online marketing content offers communication and connections not possible through traditional media channels.

As a leading online content deliverer, Spil Games works closely with our advertising clients to create interactive campaigns, seamlessly integrating their brands with our gaming content for girls, family, and teen audiences. Our game platforms provide a wide variety of possibilities for user engagement beyond traditional ad formats.

Online in Action

In 2010, we worked with Universal Pictures to develop an online campaign to increase the engagement of specific demographics with their new release, Despicable Me.

The strategy combined floor ads and takeovers on our gaming sites with two advergames to introduce players to the movie characters. The floor ads generated a 12% click-through rate (versus an industry average of .2%) and 3.7M gameplays for the advergames. You can see the execution here.

More and more of our clients are recognising the huge potential websites like ours have to connect to highly engaged consumers. Lately, Spil Games has seen spending grow in integrated content not specifically related to ads—avatar branding, for instance. Could this type of advertising be the next big thing? As it’s our job to continue to innovate and meet our clients’ needs, we’re in the process of finding out.

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At Spil Games it’s all about games. We don’t just make games, we supply everything around games. Not only for ourselves, but also for other game development partners.

I work in the Payments Team, internally called Team Altaïr or Scrum Altaïr. Yes, I have an Assassin’s Creed Altaïr action figure on my desk. We have developed a payment service which can quite easily be integrated in games by our game development partners. We supply a fully localized global payment service, offering lots of international and local payment methods. This way games can offer in-game payments, so users can buy Cash, Gold, Dollars, Sheep – anything they need to keep playing.

About two months ago we released the new payment screen; as we call it: the payment selection screen. It shows a game’s available items to buy and the available payment methods for your country. All texts are translated to your language, all prices are in your local currency, and all payment methods are popular and local payment methods available in your country. Game developers can implement this screen by including a JavaScript file and calling one JavaScript function. We take care of the rest.

The IError: Object doesn’t support this property or method

Goodgame Studios are a game partner of Spil’s. During their recent implementation of our new payment selection screen in a number of their games, they encountered a JavaScript error in Internet Explorer. After investigating the problem with our QA guys, it became clear that it occurred only in Internet Explorer up to version 8.

When we ran the Internet Explorer debugging tool by hitting F12, the debugger returned an error (“Object doesn’t support this property or method”) for the following line:

head = document.head || document.getElementsByTagName( "head" )[0] ||

document.documentElement;

This code gets the head element from the document. This same code is also used by jQuery in the asynchronous AJAX method (which actually creates a <script> element in the DOM tree).

Why was this working on all the Web sites that use our payment screen, but not on the Goodgame Studios site? And why was this working in any other browser but IE?

JavaScript’s global scope

First of all, it’s important to understand the global scope of JavaScript. When you create an element in HTML, the element’s ID is added to the global variable scope of JavaScript.

Let’s create the following element in HTML:

<div id="spil"></div>

In this case, the variable spil is in the global JavaScript scope.

<script type="text/javascript"> console.log(spil); </script>

This will actually print the div element in your console.

So, if you’ve got an element with id=”head”, then the head variable is already included in JavaScript. But this still shouldn’t be a problem if you look at our piece of code above, since we simply overwrite the head variable.

Internet Explorer’s bug and the solution

The question is: why does Internet Explorer throw an error on our line of code? The answer is simple: if there’s already a variable in JavaScript’s global scope created by an element with the same ID, then older Internet Explorer versions don’t allow you to overwrite it. Dumb IE just don’t get it.

The solution is also very simple: make sure the variable you’re assigning is not already included in the global scope. Use var head inside a function or rename it if you can’t avoid global scope (which is often bad design). Even better: use an object with the property this.head. In this way you can’t possibly have issues with your variable scope.

Code example

The following code will break in at least Internet Explorer 7 and 8. To keep it simple, I use the onload attribute in the body element, where I would normally use an event in JavaScript.

<html>

<head>

<script type="text/javascript">

function foobar() {

head = 'foobar'; // error on IE7/IE8

}

</script>

</head>

<body onload="foobar()">

<div id="head"></div>

</body>

</html>

Code example fix

The following code will work in any browser:

<html>

<head>

<script type="text/javascript">

function foobar() {

var head = 'foobar'; // fine

}

</script>

</head>

<body onload="foobar()">

<div id="head"></div>

</body>

</html>

Our case

In our case we only needed to add the var construct to the variable, as shown in the proof of concept above. There was no reason to use the global variable scope. The Goodgame Studios Web site probably had an HTML element with id=”head”. Complex problem, simple solution. Just the way I like it.
 

Lessons learned 

1. Always take good care of your JavaScript variable scope.
2. Don’t trust old Internet Explorer versions to behave the way you expect them to!

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Standing out is a core value here at Spil Games and Sander Uittenbosch is a great example of this in action. Not only is he a Content Marketeer in the Channel Management team at Spil Games, but he’s also a great example of someone who is not afraid to stand out when he’s not in the office.

Sander will be participating in the Alpe d’HuZes event in France on the 6th of June 2012 .

This event raises money for cancer research and involves biking up the famous Alpe d’Huez mountain. Participants ride up the mountain as many times as possible (up to 6 times!) in one day.

With every lap being 15 kilometers, this is a seemingly impossible task. However, from 2006 to 2011 many determined people have managed to do this, including some (recovered) cancer patients.

Sander’s inspiration to participate in this is personal.  He and his girlfriend experienced firsthand the tragedy of cancer when her mother lost a battle with the disease in 2004 Participating in this event is Sander’s way to stand out and help contribute to cancer research, in the hope that a cure will be developed some day.

At the moment his team is in training to ensure they can ride up the mountain as many times as possible. You can have look at Sander’s personal action page (the website is available only in Dutch), and more information about the team can be found on its website, where you can meet the team members and keep track of their preparation for the event in June!

You can also stay in touch with the team on Facebook and Twitter, and show your support for those who dare to stand out. 

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The advertising world is constantly looking for new ways to connect and communicate with their audiences. More and more of them are coming to Spil Games for our help. Want to find out how Relativity (for their Snow White themed film Mirror Mirror) in the United States, L’Óreal in Belgium, or LEGO Friends in the Netherlands leveraged Spil Game’s social gaming platforms?

You can read all about it in Spil Games’ latest newsletter.