Research: In-Game Advertising

Okay folks, it looks like the secret to marketing to teens is in-game advertising.

Two main avenues are open for advertising through games: in-game advertising and advergaming. The former is an extension of the product placement common in movies and television, and can range from graphical representation of a product in a game to wholesale sponsorship of a gaming title. With the increase in open-ended gaming that allows a player to wander around a virtual world (such as the Sims or Grand Theft Auto), opportunities for product placement are numerous. Advergaming refers to a game, usually online, that is wholly intended as a promotional device.
Aside from ads integrated into games themselves, marketers would be wise to advertise on related Web sites. Young consumers spend more hours per week on the Net than adults, and Forrester found that much of this time is spent on sites related to gadgets and games -" almost 80% visit games sites, almost 50% visit movie sites and over one-third visit music sites.

While I don't like advergaming much, I like it a whole lot better than in-game advertising. The problem with in-game advertising is much like going to the movie theater or watching a television show and noticing that the camera lingers too long on the badge of the car, or a can of Pepsi standing out prominiently on someone's desk. In-Game advertising is nothing new however, and has been in games for quite a long time. Early LucasArts adventure games would make references to other games in their product catalog or other Lucas-owned properties.
In the movie State and Main, one of the problems for the fictional movie company was how to insert advertising for a dot com company within their movie, which was a Western. So far, the games have been rather good about their advertising, and placing the ads within the context of the game. Crazy Taxi, for instance has the player's fares going to destinations such as KFC or Pizza Hut. In Burnout 3, there's not likely to be any billboards passed which don't contain advertising for EA Games. EQ2 has real-life pizza ordering within the game. Hopefully we'll never have to see anachronistically placed advertisements (like airline ads in an caveman game).