Advertising in video games

Advertising using games is a long-standing practice in the video game industry. Various methods have been used to integrate advertising into video games to advertise products, organizations or viewpoints.

The advergames sector reached $207 million in 2007.

Some companies and organizations expressly commission video games to promote a product or service. These games have been referred to as "advergames" (a portmanteau of "advertising" and "gaming") a term that was coined in January 2000 by Anthony Giallourakis, and later mentioned by Wired's "Jargon Watch" column in 2001. 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."

Games for advertising are sometimes classified as a type of serious game, as these games have a strong educational or training purpose other than pure entertainment.

Other methods of advertising in video games include product placement being integrated into in-game environments and companies/organizations sponsoring commercial games or other game-related content.

While other categories have been proposed, advertising in video games normally falls into one of three categories which are derived from a historical categorization technique normally applied to traditional media:

Examples of marketing in video games include brand integration, embedded marketing, recruitment tools, edutainment, and traditional in-game advertising.

Another video game advertising technique consists of advertising within a game itself. Since the intent of in-game advertising is typically commercial rather than political, some consider such advertisements to make up a category of their own. In-game advertising is similar to subtle advertising in films, where the advertising content is within the "world" of the movie. Thus billboards, storefronts, posters, apparel, vehicles, weapons, fliers, sponsored product placement, and the interplay between the player and these elements in the game allow for a great degree of virtual advertisement. Examples include billboards advertising for (and product placement of) Bawls energy drink in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, and billboards for Adidas sportswear in FIFA International Soccer.

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Wikipedia