Google's Da Vinci Code: two weeks in

May 1st 2006 - Joystiq

The Da Vinci Code web-based game from Google is on its fifteenth day of twenty-four, and we've had time to figure out quite what the game is all about. It's effectively a serialised puzzle game, with daily challenges which increase in difficulty as time wears on.

What's more interesting is the sheer weight of Google's cross-promotion. For example, a link to the game appears on standard search results, and the game itself plugs into Google's personalised homepage service. While the logic-based puzzles are straightforward, follow-on questions require some searching, promoting Google's more obscure services such as SMS translation.

With the entire Google machine behind it, this game could become very popular indeed -- this seems like a lightweight experiment to test the model, but we wouldn't be surprised if more 'casual' games come out of Google in future.

Sony Traffic Surges With Google Promo

May 12, 2006 - MediaPostPublications

AFTER GOOGLE LAUNCHED A PROMOTION of "The Da Vinci Code" on its home page, traffic at Sony Motion Pictures' Web site skyrocketed--increasing to about .0078 percent of all Web visits on May 6, from .0047 percent on April 15, according to data released Thursday by Hitwise.

Google accounted for 30 percent of the visits to Sony's site by May 6, 20 days after the promotion launched in mid-April--compared to competitors Yahoo and MSN's .93 percent and .37 percent, respectively. In the week leading up to the promotion's launch, Google accounted for roughly 3 percent of traffic sent to Sony's Web site.
To promote the movie, Google created a contest that involved branded entertainment puzzles for users' personalized home pages. Google linked to the contest on its own home page--marking the first time that Google promoted another company's product on the home page.

Separately, Fandango Thursday announced that the movie already is popular with Web users. As of Thursday, "The Da Vinci Code" is Fandango's best-selling ticket of the week--even though it won't open until May 19.