In-Game Advertising and Advergaming

Most of you love to play Games, some of you resort to go to PlayStations, some of you have just bought your X-Box and some of you have opted for Nintendo. But whatever it is that your choice is, how are you taking In-Game advertising and what exactly is Advergaming. Many of us enjoy gaming unconditionally, this is precisely the reason why gaming companies have begun to look in India as the next big market. Sony launched its PlayStation 3 in 2006 and it’s Microsoft that hit the ground running in India with the X-Box 360. The world gaming market was expected to reach 43 billion US$ that was just of 19 billion US$ in 2005. A new report from research group JPR says the PC gaming market is worth over $20 billion, and that more gaming PCs have been shipped than PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii combined.

Just because of that the demand for Virtual Space and Virtual Real Estate for the purpose of Virtual Branding is increasing. So what are advertisers doing to keep up with this growing gaming population. Virtual Branding is taking basically 2 routes – In game Advertising and Advergaming. Advergaming consists taking a product and building a game around it and then showing that to as many people as possible if done right this can be a very effective marketing tool and the other option is In-game advertising. The basic difference between these two is that while Advergaming consist of building a game from scratch around your product, In-game advertising means placing your brand within a preexisting game world.

The good news for advertisers and marketers who are consistently complaining about the clutter in the real world is that these game world remain largely untouched by Advertising therefore gaming could open up new ray of opportunities and ways of communicating with the growing consumer base.

Advergaming

With banners, pop-ups and email newsletters gaining reputation as clutter and junk rather than effective online advertising tools, brand marketers continue to search for successful formulas for Internet Advertising. They may have found it in a new trend called “Advergaming”.

Advergaming is a practice of using Videogames to advertise a product. For Example, McDonald launched a game named as ‘McDonald Land’ and Doritos launched a game ‘Doritos Dash of Destruction’

With the growth of the internet, Advergames have proliferated, often becoming the most visited aspect of brand websites and becoming an integrated part of brand media planning in an increasingly fractured media environment. Advergames theoretically promote repeated traffic to websites and reinforce brands. Users choosing to register to be eligible for prizes can help marketers collect customer data. Gamers may also invite their friends to participate, which could assist promotion by word of mouth, or "viral marketing."

Sometimes sporting games are created for the same purpose. The advertiser puts its banners on all sides of that game. As shown in this Image, RITZ BITS SANDWICHES has put its banners on all sides and at the surface of this football court.

So this is Advergaming when a game is prepared just to promote a brand.

 

In-game Advertising

In-game advertising (IGA) refers to the use of computer and video games as a medium where virtual spaces are sold for advertisement purpose to the advertisers. And sometime whole real estate property from a game is sold virtually which can be used, updated and modified in any way by the advertisers.

In 2005, spending on in-game advertising was US $56 million, and this figure is estimated to grow to $1.0 billion by 2014 according to Massive Incorporated.

Look at the photo album below. These all photos are of Ads from popular games. McDonald has marked its presence in most of  the popular games, so everyone knows the name of McDonalds. Following that, Subway has bought remarkable space in the games like Counterstrike. The virtual real-estate is strong target of Soft drink Manufacturers and food chains as through advertising in Games they put an impact on game lovers that they start preferring only these brands.

There are some challenges too in In-game advertising. The environment should be suitable to the brand and should not destruct the brand image. The ads of food chains in violent games like counter strike may hinder its brand value, and a particular product may start getting known for its violence. That’s why the sporting games like FIFA, Tennis etc. are more preferred places for food chains and soft drink manufacturers.

In-Game Advertising Album VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Google Made It Easy

We see ads on most of the websites as Ads by Google where advertisers have to pay per click for their ads, in the same way now Google ads will be displayed in the Online Games within their virtual spaces. Watch this video to know more.

Endorsing Ads in Online Video Games is a brilliant idea by Google. Watch this video…

In Game advertising has been made easy by Google’s AdSense. For In game Advertising Google has partnered with following companies to promote this service.

List of Marketers

These companies are promoting this In Game AdSense service

List of Publishers

This is the list of Gaming sites where Google AdSense Ads are being published. These publishers are providing some slots for AdSense Ads in their online Games. So, with the launch of AdSense for In-Games we can expect brighter scope in this Area.