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Ways to Improve In-Game Advertising
ches_grin writes "At a recent conference, Microsoft's Kevin Browne discussed the 5 most important ways to improve in-game advertising, contrasting the ideal with the current state-of-affairs in the industry." From the article: "Estimations of the growth of the in-game ad market have been varied. Microsoft's internal estimates put in-game advertising at about $1 billion per year by 2010. The Yankee group recently pegged revenues at $732 million in the same timeframe. Microsoft estimates that 2005 brought in $56 million in in-game ad revenue."
I'm pretty much done with DVDs -- when every dvd you buy now has advertisements on it. Even BBC box sets!
So in short, thanks for pointint out how to ruin another avenue of entertainment for consumers.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
1. Remove them
'nuff said
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel...
Mr. Browne later detailed an extensive, detailed list of methods for successfully polishing a turd.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Just look at what the wonders of in game ads do to an old classic. I'm getting hungry just looking a the glock.
a te-counter-strike/
http://joystiq.com/2006/01/11/in-game-ads-infiltr
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Or, if they must be in games... Make it so you can blow them up. The only thing I hate about web ads is when they pop over content I'm interested in reading. It happens all the time when I visit my local newspaper's page. So, if I see an advertisement, I don't mind, simply because I'm used to seeing ads EVERYWHERE. But if it pauses the game and I can't get by it until I've stared at an advertisement for two minutes, that game's coming out of my computer. Also, they should only be in modern games. If I'm playing World of Warcraft, and see an ad for "Microsoft Windows Vista", it'll ruin the game. If it's a near future game, make the ads at least near-futurish. Like in Back to the Future II. If I'm playing a WWII shooter, based in France, give me old time Pepsi ads in French. I don't care if Pepsi wasn't being sold in France before or during WWII... historical accuracy of a minute detail like that doesn't matter to me. And have it be a blown up billboard or a bullet filled sign on the side of a building. Don't distract me from my immersion. If I leave 1943 France because I see an ad for a 2007 Monte Carlo SS, I won't be happy. That is all.
My name is Wootzor von Leetenhaxor
Make any games with ads free. And make any games you pay for free from ads.
This, however, is not going to happen. A good, and maybe very slightly possible, way to let the market decide would be to label any games with ads, so I can avoid them.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
IMO it's fine to have ads in *free* (as in beer) games. It's fine to have ingame shops carry real life names and logos. It's fine to have items with real life product names in a game *if* it fits in the theme of the game. In a modern day setting it's fine to have a billboard about coke or cars. A comedy set in the middle ages or in the distant future might get away with a billboard for coke.
But please don't place interrupting or out-of-place adds in the games we buy. Those companies who do this are warned that we will replace such adds with naked women doing naughty things, make screenshots and mail those to Wallmart. Let this be called the Hot-Coffe-Treatment.
Scrabble helper with little in-game advertising :)
1. Dynamic and Flexible : Mostly static advertising
/pizza deal in EQ2 was genius! Order a pizza in a game! I want more functionality like that.
2. Broad Reach : Requires unique integration title by title
3. Accountable : Effectiveness is only measured by sell-thru
4. Easy to Integrate : Game teams pushing back, resisting due to it being a lot of work to integrate
5. Agencies Drive Value : Agencies have a very limited role
1) This would make sense at the system level, not the advertising level. I don't want to have to deal with animated gifs or AI controlled sales people in a game advertising for what ever product.
2) I would say just the opposite, Video games give you very specific demographics, and easy ways to track them, you don't need broad reach when you can practically cherry pick the add to show the consumer.
3) This one is key. One of the most annoying things about adds in TV and print is that if I see something I'm interested in, I can't buy it right then. Where as with online adds I can click on them and go straight to the company's web site and buy in over the web. I thought that
4) I would say this one ties into #1, having an advertising system for the game engine to allow for abstraction of the advertising will make it significantly easier to implement, update, and target users.
5) Is kinda screwy, but still ties into #1 and #4. With an abstract advertising system in the game engine, the advertisers put together a package and the producer implements that package (assuming it meets their criteria).
And I'm amazed there there are no "points" about the players point of view. Nothing saying that adds need to be integrated with the environment and non-immersion breaking. That to me is the big one. If in-game adds are as annoying as pop-up adds for web browsers, the industry will start losing players.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
I think the game should be paused every 10 minutes, at which point the user must watch 3 minutes of commercials before the game continues. (Much like the way Windows Vista is being designed.)
Don't put ads in the games I play. I play games to escape reality, and I pay for that priviledge. We have enough ads already. You've gone too far!
Put ads in games and I will not buy them. I'll do my best to convince all my friends who also BUY (not copy) games to do the same.
And while I have your attention:
Get rid of the cd-check. They are only a annoyance to legitimate customers and it just feels wrong that I have to download a patch from a third party to be able to enjoy a game without having to eject whatever music cd (that I bought) I'm listening to.
Last game bought: Hitman: Blood Money
Last music bought: Global Chillout Lounge
Harald
...you can put advertising in games... and it would work too! You just have to do it the right (and rediculously(sp?) silly) way.
Imagine playing CounterStrike (or some other squad-based, round-oriented shooting game) and BAM, you've been shot in the head. Now, instead of immediately going into spectator mode, you get a quick little flash on the screen
"Not going anywhere for awhile? Grab a Snickers(tm)!"
Or maybe something a little more specific to your experience:
"You just got cut in half by a Steyr Aug(tm)! When it's gotta die, choose Steyr!"
Or, maybe some groups will use advertising for what is is meant: annoying people:
"Take Jesus into your heart now, and you will have life after death! Contact your local [choose your favorite flavor of christian] church now or call this toll free number..."
Or maybe...
"Been shot in the head? Got a headache? Try Bayer!..."
You get the idea.
The number one thing on there was to make the advertisements dynamic instead of static. Now if marketing dorks look at that and say, ok, we need a goodyear blimp crossing the screen, they missed. On the other hand, if they lay down a frito lay factory in the middle of Grand Theft Auto, and allow you to BLOW IT UP, then you have something.
Destructable advertisements. You take out your favorite franchises (DIE Walmart!!), they get name recognition. I could deal with this.
Imagine you're playing BF 2, and wham, right in the middle of the map is a McDonalds. Bleh, wonder how much money EA got for that? Then you find you can blow the golden arches off with a tank round.
What if your playing City Life, and actually get to BUY McDonalds? Not some cheap lookalike company conjured up to avoid copyright infringements. You get the burgers, the clown, the tube playgrounds out back - the whole nine yards.
Companies play their cards right in the video game market, and it could work for everyone. If they treat video games like TV shows (stale static pictures on boxes) - they will do more to turn kids away from video games than a whole congress of Jack Thompsons.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
The infamous CounterSubway incident is a perfect example of what not to do.
Remember all those drink cans in Half-Life 2? Would you have cared if half of them were Coca-Cola?
Wouldn't it just add to the surreal atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic game if you were to see a dusty billboard advertising something common today?
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Simple! REMOVE IT. Instant improvement.
The whole thing completly bypasses the issue of what will consumers (you know, those people that actually buy - or not - the games) accept or not as advertising in a game. The stated 5 Ways to Improve In-Game Advertising all have to do with how game makers can make it easier for ad-agencies to sell adverts in games - all the while ignoring the important side-effect that adverts in a game have in the profitability of that game: how much will sales of a game decrease because of the quantity/type of adverts in that game.
Here's a couple of points coming from a gamer:
- If your game is situated in a present time scenario, adverts are actually a good thing as long as they are present in the same places and forms as they would be in comparable real life situations. Thus, for example, a football (soccer for you americans) simulator should have adverts around the playing fields, just like they have in real life - in this situation adverts give depth and realism to the game.
- If your game is not situatied in a present-time/real-life-like scenario don't do in-game adverts. If you really, really want to make money from adverts, get companies to sponsor official mods and extensions for the game and make those available for free from a website while avertising (in that website) for the company that sponsored the mod/extension.
- Just follow the example of TV - in pay-TV, at most you'll see some product placement in those movies/series whose story takes place in a real-life-like present-day environment, never, for example, in science fiction movies. Free TV goes a step further an has adverts before and after each block of free content. Notice how pay-TV is way lighter on adverts than free TV - that's because most people are not willing to pay for seing adverts (at least not where i live): keep that in mind.
I've seen it bandied around that companies should avoid placing advertisements that breaks immersion in the gameworld - for example, just about any advertising in a fantasy realm would break immersion, and thus should not be included in a game.
Since game development companies want to maximize cash flow, and advertising is a way for them to increase their cash flow (especially if they have dynamic ads that can be updated after the game is initially launched) I believe you'll see a move away from games where ads aren't easily insertable into the game - in other words, a reduction in the number of fantasy, apocolyptic, and otherwise "non-advertising friendly" games with good production values.
I hate the idea of in-game advertising as much as anybody else. I also hate what I fear this trend will do to the games I enjoy...
InThane
Is some marketing or PR firm trying to use /. as an unpaid focus group? Don't tell 'em squat, people. Or lie.
Personally, I love in game advertising. The more the better. And it doesn't have to make sense in context. Just throw in product placement anywhere. Level 45 Druids drinking Coca Cola, love it! Barbarians in Hummers, oooh! Scary! Moto Razr communicators in Star Trek, Ginsu brand light sabers, Met Life insurance policies on your characters, bring it on! Right everybody?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I am for in game adds (if they lower the cost of gaming), but the have to be done well, this is exactly how to ruin them. Decoding the marketing speak his points are:
1 very intrusive: subtle
2 stick them anywere: but some effort into placing them at logical points.
3 invade your privacy: measure ROI without destroying privacy.
4 dup. of point 2.
5 marketing executives place ads (seemingly at random to us lesser mortals): games developers carefully integrate adverts into the games environment without destroying suspension of disbelief.
The are two rules to making good in-line adverts: don't be intrusive and done break the suspension of disbelieve.
If you can create a standard API which allows a brand of suger water to sponsor the tournament in X sports sim, and create large flashing billboards for BladeRunner MMOG (maybe this will prompt them to actually make this), appear as a faded fly poster in X FPS, an in game item in the SIMS, and never show up in World of Warcraft then you should be programming something more important than an in game ad server.
Gran Turismo series is a good example. Do you want to be driving past billboards for mock companies, in a car with fake sponsors, on circuits with changed names and layouts?
I agree that WoW would be ruined by a quest to return the Flame Grilled Whopper Recipe, and that BF1942 can do without the latest Nissan Micra advert, but some games are improved by the added realism. If these ads generate revenue to continue to develop quality games then that'll be a good thing too. Just don't make them intrusive or a hindrance to my enjoyment in any way shape or form.
Hm, five ways? Let's see...
1. Get rid of them
2. Remove them
3. Disable them
4. Block them
5. ???
There are very few games where in-game ads are appropriate and don't distract from the game itself. Some sports games might qualify, but only if your goal is to simulate not only the game but the entire stadion atmosphere as well. The only genre I can really think of where ads are part of the game are Cyberpunk games where the theme practically requires every available surface to be covered in ads, so there could just as well be a couple real ones among them.
Aside from that: Free TV with ads? Fine. Pay-TV and no ads? Fine. Pay-TV with ads? I think that's been tried and found to be a horrible failure. I pray that in-game advertisement will go the same way.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
As a quite avid gamer playing a variety of games especially mmo's and rpg games (both single and online) I find ingame advertising for out of game products to be intrusive and quite offensive as they break the immersion factor of the game for me personally.
Take for one example one of the small scale MMORPG's I used to play the game is set some several hundred years in the future after a couple of nuclear wars. So what do you expect to see on the billboards inside the main cities but Alienware adverts!
Its like wow this game is superb I love the backstory and all the atmosphere then BANG here get reminded that money drives everything and here have a look at an Alienware advert.
Now I don't know about you lot but I'd rather pay like £15 a month for a game subscription than have to put up with ingame ads for out of game products. The only exception I can just about tollerate is things like racing games based on real world tracks and cities where they aim for 100% realism of the environment so that includes all advertising as well.
Is the reason I've watched less than 24 hours of television in the past year. Put this in my games and I'll be hitting the library.
"Imagine if every time you put your favourite CD in, the first track told you about how wrong it is to copy music."
Considering how permissive society is towards such behaviour. It would be a waste. Now if it was an ad telling us to copy and distribute to the entire world? That would be an ad we'd be glad to view.
I do not understand how to possibly put ads in many games without breaking those games. This is especially true for games where the settings is completely different from the real world. Imagine playing World of Warcraft, and then suddenly seeing a big ad for Coca Cola outside Ogrimmar... that would break immersion. I could see something like that in GTA, though.
Bjarke Roune
Someone in here posted a suggestion of destructable ads. That is phenomenal! It would take an advertiser with BIG balls to do it, but it would be a guaranteed hit.
I wrote an article on my site a while ago that I will not shamelessly plug that discusses this exact topic and how companies can make their ads fit into the gameworlds rather than just be intrusive and disruptive to the gaming experience. You can read the article here. Would love any feedback people have.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Most game patches now are made primarily availilbe from services like GameSpy, where registration and ads are plentiful. I would happily _Opt In_ to see in game ads, to have a _fast_ patch server access, rather than logging into GameSpy and seeing crap load more ads, to patch a buggy rushed out the door game. If publishers are going to give me ads, I want something in return.
This game had "decent" in-game advertising. Computers you "hacked" into had an AMD or Nokia screensaver. As long as it doesn't disrupt the flow of the game, using signs and such isn't that bad.
Now, it would be good if in-game advertising lowered game prices. But i guess they are using it to "recover from piracy loses"
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
What they are talking about is already in games. Say you are running through a train station, you may see a pop machine with a logo for some beverage. We are not talking about pop up ads, or ad-screens, just various objects in the game that you may come across that have a logo. As long as in game advertising stays to this level, and can go mostly unnoticed, its ok by me.
Product placement is just one of the death throes of the entertainment industry. We are in a huge transition period that's going to change the whole picture of games, movies and music. The entry barrier is dropping to zero because of technology that lets dedicated amateurs produce media that's as good as what big studios can do. There will be a flood of very creative people who have never had an audience because of the narrow distribution channels enforced by the mechanics of business. The sheer volume of high quality free entertainment will price the industry out of its own market, and will have commercial-free variety like we've never seen.
The reason these stories on Slashdot are useless is because all of the slashbots here will be screaming "I don't want ads!". Well, tough shit. Advertising is part of our world and culture and they are coming to video games whether you want them to or not.
:) ].
:P). I like how the USPS's definiton of '1st Class Mail' only covers bills/invoices/purchase orders/related whatnot, financial statements/legal papers/government correspondence, checks and equivalents, and handwritten personal correspondence. To them, everything else that is not a periodical or parcel of some kind is considered bulk mail and is fair game for recycling/disposal. :)
:) (the animated menu on Disney's Lion King DVD is notoriously long! :P) If you live in the USA and are thinking 'FVCK THE DMCA(.pdf)!!!!' there is software out there that will allow you to 'remaster' a commercial DVD to remove 'all' unwanted content. Non-USA world citizens don't have this worry (lucky them!)
:P
There are 3 ways to avoid advertising. Here they are:
1) Die. Seriously. Then your problems with advertising will be all over for good. The drawback is that it is permanent [depending on your beliefs in an afterlife....
2) Live 'off the grid' on public/private land with NONE of the technological amenities of modern civilization other than (maybe) a P.O. box or other suitable 'mail drop' (but then the ad men will probably get ahold of it and still send you junk mail!
3) Use the technologies at hand to minimize/eliminate your exposure to advertising. Some examples:
3a) Digital Video Recorders with 'adskip' (if you can still buy 'em or build 'em). If push comes to shove, hang on to your VCRs and use them instead.
3b) DVD Players that ignore Prohibited User Operation(s) (and region codeds as well!). Yay, no more FBI warnings/trailers/long animated menus before the movie!
3c) Ad blocking hosts file for your webbrowser such as this one. Use a 'surfer friendly' web browser like Off By One that ignores Flash and popup windows because it doesn't understand the SCRIPT and OBJECT HTML tags I am using it now to write this post instead of IE 5 that came with Windows 2000. Slashdot looks like crap in IE 5 so I gave up on it and am now using Off By One to surf Slashdot--much nicer! If you have to/want to use a 3rd party popup blocker, I heartily recommend NoAds
On Windows and tired of email spam? Filter it out with my absolutely free gift back to the Internet community at large who can use it. Since I started using it, my email spam has dropped to essentially zero. Attention Mods. before you mod this post down as spam/karmawhoring, consider 'going after' Roland Piquepaille first who always seems to get a story posted here no matter how trivial it is sometimes...or the multpage 'adfest' stories mentioned here from Tom's Hardware.
P.S. Sorry, I have no solution to public restroom advertising other than to keep your eyes closed while you do your business, use a 100% ad-free bathroom, or risk being arrested for defecating/urinating in public....
"The writing is on the wall" Indeed. Legal, for-profit commercial graffiti....
Don't. Plain and simple.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
In first person shooters set in a futuristic earth you could perhaps have a laser gun made by Ruger or Beretta. Or perhaps if your FPS got down to 2 or 3 and holds like that have a friendly graphic reminder that the game would work better with an upgraded video card/processor/memory depending on what your system specs are. I feel that advertising in games could be benificial to gamers and developers alike and it's perfectly acceptable. We get advertised at when we are driving down the road, when we walk through a mall, browse the web, watch TV, listen to the radio, eat fast food, and when we check our free e-mail. Advertising will never leave us, and I feel it is acceptable in gaming. Advertising is an excellent way to get a product sold. Otherwise, we'd be stuck with word of mouth.