gaming

In Norway, where I am currently located, advertising for gaming is illegal. The same goes for alcohol, tobacco and many other things. 

Still, there are a couple of Norwegian TV-channels that floods its poor watchers with gaming adverts - because the company is located in London, and not within the Norwegian jurisdiction. And the past 3-4 months, the ads for gaming in these channels has increased dramatically. 

What I have noticed in the same period, is a dramatic increase in spam emails promoting craps, poker and a large amount of related ads. This led me to asking one of my security buddies in the US if the same is going on in the US. He said that no, no such trend was evident over there.

This has led me to consider that Spammers are no longer only using geographic data to tune their spam, but also offer to target particular areas and times when the clients are buying ads in other medias too - thus strengthening the message to the customer. 

This cross-branding, or cross marketing, is nothing new in RL - you see it in TV, papers and magazines around the year. What I find interesting is that now you can cross-brand yourself in magazines, TV, Radio AND by using spam - at the same time.