Stick Sports seeks new ad agency

The company, best known for its stickcricket.com website, is consolidating all its sports games into a single portal, as part of a new strategy that also sees the firm debut a new game and open new offices.

The new portal, www.sticksports.com, brings together all the games from the Stick Sports brand into a single website.

The portal features Stick Sports' cricket, football, baseball, motorsports and tennis games, encouraging devotees to try out different games, keeping them on the site longer and making it easier for advertisers to run campaigns across the whole of Stick Sports' portfolio of games.

The company has also launched a new game,  Stick Tennis, with variety of ad formats on the web page as well as "in-game", including sponsors logos appearing on the court or on perimeter advertising.

The company is now searching for a new advertising sales house to maximise advertising revenue from brands eager to target the site's key demographic of young male professionals.

Stick Sports said the new sales house will be truly independent, international, publisher agnostic and will be able to deliver a variety of ad formats, including rich media, video pre-rolls, custom page and takeovers.

Stick Sports Publisher Paul Collins said: "Stick Sports' free online games are predominantly played by young male professionals, so it's a great way to market to a key demographic with disposable cash. The online games medium for advertising continues to hold its own despite the recession, while Stick Sports continues to grow in terms of users and ad revenue.

"Stick Sports is more than just a games site - it's a community, with forums, polls, news and results to keep our 2.2 million monthly visitors on the sites for long periods of time, which is great news for our advertising partners. What's more, Stick Sports enables us to be creative with different advertising platforms, such as bespoke sponsored games and in-game advertising which engages, rather than distracts, our players. It all adds up to fantastic return on investment for our advertising partners."

Stick Sports is complementing its global user base with on-the-ground operations in key territories around the world. A new office opens in Sydney's central business district in March. The company is also finalising a sponsorship agreement with a major satellite TV network that will see Stick Sports' games marketed to new audiences in Asia.

www.sticksports.com