Study Finds In-Game Ads Work

A study conducted by Nielsen and Activision has concluded that in-game advertising works on the traditional gamer demographic. From the eToyChest article: "The study was conducted among 1350 active male gamers ages 13 to 44. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of nine test or control cells. Respondents who were assigned to four game test cells, featuring the games MTX Motortrax, Tony Hawk's Underground 2, Need For Speed Underground 2 and NHL 2K6, were then exposed to brands and products at various levels of integration and pervasiveness within each game. Participants assigned to two game control cells played the same games without any products integrated or placed in the game. According the study, it confirms earlier findings that product integration helps to drive awareness and recall, but also uncovers a new variable, pervasiveness, which contributes to driving brand awareness as well."

Comments

Product Placement vs. Blatant Ads

[Kelson]

What I find interesting about this study is that it suggests that product placement -- putting brand names into situations where you would expect them to be in the context of the game world -- is effective. Movies and TV have been doing this for years. Remember how every cell phone in The Matrix was Nokia, or the extreme close-up on the Dr. Pepper can when Peter Parker was practicing web shooting in Spider-Man? (And those are relatively recent.)

By immersing the ads into the gameplay, rather than flashing an advertisement on the side of the screen, the ads simply become part of the atmosphere rather than a punch-the-monkey level annoyance.

I'd still prefer fewer advertisements in things I'm already paying for -- commercials in movie theaters, previews on DVDs, etc. -- but integrated ads aren't nearly as bad as some of the alternatives.

Whoa, stop the presses.

[voice_of_all_reason]

In other news, Spyware also increases sales and brand awareness. It's still a scummy thing to do.

Ads are ads

[Trails]

I would hazard that the positive response is driven in part by the novelty of in-game ads. I know the first time I saw one in planetside, I stared at it for a bit, to check it out. I suspect this will turn into annoying "background noise" soon enough, and will become as [in]effective as any other form of advertising once the "new car smell" wears off.

genre specific...

[C0rinthian]

Anyone else notice that all the test games were sports games? Situations where there is rampant advertising in their real-life equivalents? It's not like product placement isn't expected in those situations.

Examples of blatant ads?

[Cerberus7]

How long has blatant product placement been going on? The earliest I can remember is the box of Cherios in Superman. Anybody know of earlier examples, or if maybe there's a list online?

One of the reasons I didn't like F.E.A.R....

[afabbro]

...was the in-game ads. All the laptops you found were of a certain brand that displayed the logo. Had they been laptops with a standard Windows desktop, then I could see that as just being realism. But they just had the vendor's logo.

For $55, there should be a way to turn off in-game ads. I mean, for the love of God, $55 is already ridiculous.

(Admittedly, I also thought it was a crappy game for many other reasons...in-game ads was just one of the nits further down the list).

Ads in Tony Hawk's

[LKM]

These games are hardly suited for judging people's acceptance of in-game ads. If I'm playing Tony Hawk's, I obviously expect them to wear clothes from real brands, and have brand-name skateboards. Likewise, I expect real cars and real tuning brands in games like Need for Speed, and I'm not bothered by billboards in sports games because there are billboards in real sport events, too.

That does not mean that I want to see a coke sign or a Nike ad in a game which is based on a fictional universe.

They work because they are new.

[SharpFang]

Soon you'll get tired with in-game ads just the same as with the real-world ones. The novelty will end and the effectiveness will drop just to the standard low margins of all ads.
You, Americans, were brought up in the world of commercials. I lived through fall of "communism" in Poland, and back then there was almost no commercials. And completely no TV commercials. When the first ones showed up on TV, it was all the craze. Everyone was buying the cockroach killer stickers, even if you had no cockroaches, just because it was on TV. Kids were crazy about the Kuku-Ruku candy bar, even if there were many better, tastier, cheaper ones in trade. But this one was in TV commercials. TV commercials were new and cool.
Then they got boring and started to really piss people off. Just to the degree they do now.