Over the long term, the virtual casino should help Harrah’s build a better customer experience for people who visit the casinos, says Tim Stanley, vice president of IT development.

"As we implement an even more personalized experience on the website, we would also expect to utilize customers’ product preferences to tailor their experience on and offline," Stanley says. "That info can come from both their actual activity and preferences demonstrated on the casino floor?as well as from data learned from Play for Fun."

And if and when online gambling is ever legalized in the United States, Harrah’s Entertainment no doubt will have a healthy piece of the action.

Maximum Exposure

One lesson learned by all organizations that put online games to work is this: The greatest online game ever invented won’t do a thing for you if no one is playing it. So many companies turn to game portals such as San Francisco-based Shockwave.com, another Web Business 50 winner, to promote and host their games. Shockwave.com and its sister site, Atomfilms.com?where users watch animated and live film shorts?lure more than 24 million visitors per month and lay claim to 60 million registered users. On any given day, Shockwave.com sees between 600,000 and 700,000 unique visitors.

In addition to selling subscriptions for users to play some of its games, Shockwave.com earns money by developing and promoting games for others. Real Pool, a popular and free online game of pool that was developed by the Groove Alliance and is hosted by Shockwave.com, is sponsored by Jack Daniel’s whiskey. According to a white paper written by the marketing company KPE, external banners placed around the game generated a CTR of 0.42 percent. Meanwhile, the ads embedded in the game saw a CTR of 2.2 percent.

Incorporating logos and branding messages in content is becoming more popular because players tend to play a game more than once, thereby offering the advertiser multiple opportunities to reach the player, says John Welch, vice president of games and product development at AtomShockwave.

"Games work because of the interactivity and the long time of exposure and repeat exposure," Welch says. "People will come back to play again and again. It’s an opportunity to drive different stages of a campaign."

Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford agrees. The automaker coproduced three short films with AtomFilms to promote its new Focus line of cars, then turned to Shockwave.com when it wanted to develop a game to turn the buzz up a notch?and DJ Fu Wax Attack was born. Players control DJ Fu, the main character, and navigate urban surroundings (populated with Detroit landmarks such as the Ambassador Bridge) as they collect and spin records and knock off bad guys with a series of kung fu punches and kicks. Ford billboards scroll across the screen in the background as DJ Fu advances. When he successfully completes a level, a Ford Focus ZX3 takes him to the next one. Bob Fesmire, Focus marketing manager, says he knew the game was fun but wasn’t sure how to get it in front of its target audience of 16- to 24-year-olds. Then he found Shockwave.com, and from June to September the game has seen about 700,000 plays at its original Ford address, www.focus247.com, and nearly 3 million plays at Shockwave.com. As a result of this success, Ford and Shockwave.com are negotiating a sponsorship deal for a DJ Fu sequel, which would be an industry first.