Games and Video In Advertising – ad:tech Sydney 2007
Posted by: Marker | Uncategorized | 08.02.2007
Examples I have seen this week are:
- Nintendogs campaign which has a game integrated into a Flash banner. Very cool. (sorry, I can’t find an example of this online, I’ll keep looking and also contact the guy who had it in his presentation).
- Virgin Casino campaign using interactive video.
- Castlemaine XXX Beach Cricket Game.
- EA are continually developing teaser versions of their console and PC games for use in advertising.
Other interesting advances in this field are:
A technology developed by a company called Massive (founded by 3 Aussies, recently acquired by Microsoft for gazzillions) that allows for real time delivery of ads into online games, both PC and consoles (XBox, PlayStation). For example, see the screenshot below from popular game Splinter Cell:
The concept of advertising supported online games. Research suggests 70% of games would accept ads in games if it were free or very cheap.
Some terms:
Advergaming – the game is effectively the ad
In Game Advertising – You insert ads into the game.
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This can be good, but it can also go horribly wrong. In-Game ad’s can work in certain genre’s without to much fuss, most FPS’s, racing games, sports games (sides of the fields) things like that, where we’re used to seeing ad’s present already on the TV.
Where this can go wrong is when the marketing company / game creators decide to push their advertising into a non-suitable genre, most RTS’s, MMO’s and Sci-Fi games, the recently released Battlefield: 2142 installer was pre-packaged with some spyware that monitored your internet browsing habits and then served up relevant ad’s within the game itself.
So. The year 2142. Earth is a frozen wasteland. But I can still get a brand new / refreshing / cheap / expensive . Riiiight. Now, if instead of serving an ad for a brand new, lets say, BMW M6, maybe the advertising company, instead of just taking the cash and running should say to the company that wants to advertise in BF:2142, “look, the ad you want us to serve up won’t fit into the environment that the users are participating in, how about coming up with an ad that fits”.
Creating a context sensitive ad is just as important as serving it in the first place.
Hopefully companies can keep in-game ad’s tactful and relevant.