Intertainment Media and Itibiti Systems’ CEO, David Lucatch, is not ashamed to admit how much time and money he spends playing virtual games, especially ones on Facebook such as Zynga’s FarmVille. He admits to watching almost no TV, but is completely addicted to social gaming. Ask him about it and he’ll tell you it’s “research” but we all know he loves bragging to his Facebook friends about how many tractors he has.

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Lucatch is not alone. Every day, 67 million people that aren’t running public companies are playing Zynga’s social games on Facebook. They’re currently the best model of how to make money with online content. Within the game you can pay real money to purchase virtual goods. Well now, Zynga, the $2 billion valuated company, is poised to make even more money. They’re offering pre-paid game cards at major retailers such as 7-Eleven, Best Buy, GameStop, and Target.

This is a brilliant move on so many fronts:

  • What game do we buy your nephew? I don’t know what he likes and I don’t know what he has, but I do know that he likes to play Mafia Wars. I constantly get his invites on Facebook. Let’s just get him a gift card.
  • Every year, an estimated 10% of gift cards go unused (source: TowerGroup consulting). That estimate was more than four years ago. Today I would guess it’s a lot higher. Have you noticed the racks and racks of gift cards now available at your super market? Here are some other amazing numbers from a Seattle Post Intelligence article from 2006.

Limited Brands Inc. said last week that unspent gift cards contributed $30.4 million to fourth-quarter revenue, boosting profit 4 cents a share. Best Buy Co. reported 4 cents in earnings last quarter from gift cards that it concluded would never be redeemed. Home Depot Inc. in June reported $43 million in pretax profit from cards sold before 2002.

  • A great marketing ploy to the physical world. They’re now going to expose their brand to physical spaces and be seen. In total, Zynga will be physically distributing their game redeemable cards at more than 12,800 retail outlets. They couldn’t do this at all before with the model they had.

David Lucatch’s birthday is coming up in June. He may be a man that has everything, but he could use a few more tractors.