In-game advertising
november 7, 2006In a previous post I’ve talked a bit about Second Life, a game that takes place in a virtual world. Comparable to The Sims. These days more and more games and brands are joining hands to advertise in game. And I’m not only talking about online games, even the traditional board game Monopoly have released a special “Here and Now” edition of the board game which has elements of the real world implemented. They’ve started using branded tokens in the boardgame. For example they have implemented a pawn in the shape of a McDonalds french fries bag or a Starbucks cup and even a laptop! (via Marketing Facts). This is another great example of branded entertainment that more and more brands are getting into these days.
According to this post on games.blogo.nl, is in-game advertising becoming a hype. Not many people have discovered yet what the possibilities are. The post is about the use of dynamic advertising instead of using static advertisements in-game. The actual use of dynamic advertisements are still prohibited for legal and privacy reasons, the possibilities are enormous (via Marketing Facts). If I combine this idea with the use of smart advertisement in outdoor advertisement, that i mentioned in a previous post, then I think we can actually provide personal and relevant information to the users. The problem in the “real” world was to find a way to identify specific interests of the people in order to show them relevant advertisements. But in the game you have the possibilities to get this information from the profile they have filled in before. It’s also easier to profile the users according to their actions in-game.
In this article (via games.blogo.nl), they mentioned that Nielsen Media forecasts that ad spending on brand placement in games will explode from $75 million last year to as much as $1 billion by 2010.
So perhaps I have finally found a subject worth researching about? What’d you think?
Edit: for english version of articles, just copy paste url/text in Babelfish. I apologize for the inconvenience.
hey Yipster,
In de Media Marketing van deze maand staat een uitgebreid artikel over gamevertising. BLijkbaar is er ook een gast in Amsterdam thesisgewijs mee bezig: In-game brand placement. Thessis propositie van Steven Pruis, vrije universiteit Amsterdam. Zijn onderzoek is te verkrijven via spruis@feweb.vu.nl
jooee
Hey Yipster,
Don’t know if you’re english or not, but Frits is right (which you can’t read if you’re not Dutch:), I did an article about in-game advertising. I researched the relationship between “in-game advertising” and “attitude” (instead of the already investigated “memory”). If you’re interested in doing research in this topic, but still want to be relevant academic-wise and managerial-wise, you can contact me via stevenpruis@hotmail.com or spruis@feweb.vu.nl, because I also made some suggestions for future research in my thesis.
Greetz
Steven
[...] Y. (07 November 2006). In-game advertising. [Online posting]. Viewed on: 18-09-2007, from: http://alexyip.wordpress.com/2006/11/07/in-game-advertising/ CBS News. (16 july 2005). In-game advertising: article. Viewed on: 18-09-2007, from: [...]