Although the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is now over, having wrapped up less than a week ago, many of the key themes, products and services highlighted during the show will leave indelible impressions in the minds of the 160,000 plus attendees for the months ahead. So what were the key themes of this year's CES and what do they bode for the advertising and content industries in the near future? Here's my take on it:

Last weekend, the New York Times ran an article titled “Will Zynga Become The Google of Games?” exploring the meteoric rise of “play platform” Zynga. To be true, the social gaming company that was once solely dependent on the fate of rising network Facebook is now branching out in earnest as it pursues an apparent mission to become the platform of choice in the casual gaming world…while making piles of money in the process.

This week marks another edition of the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3, the video game industry’s pre-eminent trade conference and showcase. One of this year’s most anticipated new product introductions that generated huge buzz at the show was Microsoft’s Kinect motion controller technology.

A few days ago, we posted a tweet on this presentation by Jesse Schell, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who discusses the potential of gaming systems to increase productivity and create effective incentives. Basic game mechanics, when executed on a large scale, have the potential to revolutionize entire corners of our society and even our everyday way of life.