Hi, I'm interested in probing into the field of advertising in games. My company, originally a web agency, makes web-games for brands. Our projects have become more and more advanced, with bigger budgets. We now plan to start at the other end as well: To make big budget games and then invite the brands to be visual in the games. The in-game market today is dominated by casual games with small budgets and slap-on-options for the brand owners, ie; all games are conformed to fit every brand. I now seek collegues to discuss this and exchange ideas. Is it possible to create a AAA game financed only by in-game ads? Can gaming adapt the product placement strategies like the ones in the movie industry?

of course! more and more people don't watch TV much less watch the ads in it. to have ads, frankly, plastered on your game gives them much needed exposure. imagine a GTA game where the player drinks Coke. you will have at least 10 billboards and another 10 street signs (and that's a very conservative number for a game like that) for that product alone. companies will pay big for that type of exposure and advertisments bucks mean lower game costs. means everyone wins wallet-wise but lose annoyance-wise (only because it will become intrusive quickly).

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
of course! more and more people don't watch TV much less watch the ads in it. to have ads, frankly, plastered on your game gives them much needed exposure. imagine a GTA game where the player drinks Coke. you will have at least 10 billboards and another 10 street signs (and that's a very conservative number for a game like that) for that product alone. companies will pay big for that type of exposure and advertisments bucks mean lower game costs. means everyone wins wallet-wise but lose annoyance-wise (only because it will become intrusive quickly).

I totally agree. And possibly this can be the solution to gamecracking if the games could be distributed for free if ads are the only revenue? I know there's still doubts about letting advertising into games, but that concern might be exaggerated.

The Attention Economy
The Long Tail

Not only is advertising supported publication possible or feasible, but some would argue it is inevitable and destined to become the primary economic model for entertainment/media sales and distribution in the near future. The costs of production are transferred from being explicitly borne by the consumer onto the advertiser, who was already spending money to reach consumers with a marketing message but who now gets more value for the money because of the more targeted nature of digital content.

In return, the consumer supplies attention - attention to the content creator and attention to the sponsoring marketer/advertiser.

How do we move from theory to action?
I think we need standardized ad models to attract brands in a big way. To begin with product placement in game stories is probably a too slow start? And also brands will be hesitant to appear in aggressive and violent games so we will probably see a boost in sports- and music games financed by ads and free to purchase for gamers.

The major issue with advertising is proving exposure. There is no point (from an advertisers perspective) placing ads in a place they won't be seen. The big guys in the advergaming market are working on systems that provide feedback on the number of eyeballs (how many times/for how long an advert/placement is on screen). Unless you can demonstrate to an advertiser that your game will be in front of X hundred thousand people then you will have trouble attracting worthwhile ad revenue.

So there's not enough measurements in place to prove that in-game ads work? This was also the case for online ads back in the nineteenhundredandnineties.

Once back then we made online ads for Nokia for less than 0,1 cents per interaction. Before that, we spent month persuading Nokia to even try the Internet. So we'll probably have to roll out our sleeves and do that kamikaze stunt for clients all over again, but this time for games.

Here's a good example where ads in NFS Underground 2 reached 69% awareness: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=7393

Cheers/ Jocke

I wish I could follow that link but the work firewall blocks it.

I would hazard to guess that you can expect the same return that movies get for product placement and I’d try for more.

When you’re playing a fps, walk down a hallway, and see a Coke machine…then die…go down the hallway and see it again and again and again.

You can also have this logged and sent back to your central server. You’ll want to do this because your first game will be “we promise LOTS AND LOTS of people will see your product!” and you wont garner all that much. I’d guess you’d even take a loss on your first product.

But if you have it logged how many times the NPC Joe the Janitor was seen eating a Twinkie™ in the hallway, then you really have leverage.

“Joe the Janitor and your Twinkie™ product had 45,893 unique views and 259,854 reoccurring views. We’d like more money this time.”

Wow. I almost wish I was making another fps instead of a space game that’ll only appeal to a select % of the playing public.

Another thing, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about the violence of the game. That’s not as issue.

Fisher Price wont pay to place ads in a hack and slash zombie game but I’d bet Sobe will. I bet a music label will want to buy ad space for their new metal album

Follow me?

The only trouble I foresee is Coke™ saying “make a guaranteed death after they see our Coke™ machine so they have to go back and see it again. Watch out for that.

God, I’d love to start another product just to test this theory out!

I would definitely same in game advertising is going to become a future norm. With so many articles (an example of one: http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/2005/10/03/ingame_ads_drive_60_increase/index.php) having come out and agencies now examining the statistics of it more, it will be no suprise. It becomes even more evident when you see large companies like Massive being purchased by Microsoft.

Advertising in game has already been going on for a while. But really, i'm not sure if i'm sad or happy that it's getting so big now. It just means less opportunity.

I had even read over several studies that mentioned players opinions and reactions to ingame advertising. I wish I could find the links to them now (I thought i had them bookmarked) as they were very interesting. Especially since they stated that gamers did not mind ingame advertising as long as it fit. Eg: as long as it's ambient advertising.

A perfect example of ambient advertising 1:
I was at work one day and a friend of mine was telling me about both the greatness of the 360 (and i listened with disdain) and the greatness of Fight Night (to which I was curious on the game design and mechanics). During his story about Fight Night, he told me about how he got to some sort of Burger King championship. He then commented how he thought it was even cool that they had a "BK fight" where the actual "Burger King" (as seen in the ads) comes into the ring and does his thing. When I asked him to think about what he said, he bewildered. Ingame advertising gold. It fits the environment, it has ambient additions (ring sponsors), and it sticks in your head. Brilliantly done.

A perfect example of ambient advertising 2:
Many SWAT oriented FPS games show the standard soda machine with Coke smacked right on there. This never much affected me, and I often found it to be a nice touch. Thing is, now people are most likely used to it and its lost its effectiveness. Gorilla advertising coming to a game near you?

In terms of the number of eyeballs... I think this would really be less of a problem than people think, at least in a Multiplayer FPS environment. A brief moment of thought on the idea brings up the following pausible solution:

Say you have various billboards scattered accross your map. You want to know when a player 'sees' this billboard. A simple way to check would be to have a trigger that goes off when a player gets within X proximity of the billboard. Have this recorded as an eyeball hit during the course of the game (but do nothing more, as bandwidth conservation and low latency is of great importance). At the end of the map, when the game is finished, this information is uploaded to the game designers master server. No one notices, and you get your eyeball count.

An old german joke: http://www.computertrainerin.de/fun/imgs/Krombacher.gif
(This critical error is sponsored by: <insert beer brand>) :)


Ontopic:

The Game Anarchy Online (http://www.anarchyonline.com/) is using advertising.

In this 3D MMORPG you see advertises in the game. People found out that they actually see how long someone is looking onto a special adertising and from which direction etc. Here is the proof that it is possible :)

The Game is not complete free but they started with an advertised-version in 2005 and this one is still for free. (At least till 01/07)


I think it is easier to make a game and insert the advertisings later. Since i dont think that companys will pay you, just for the case that you say that you will produce a AAA Game within the next 2 years.

If your EA you may use this way :)