"Game-vertising"

In-game advertising, or "game-vertising", is a highly sophisticated, finely tuned strategy that combines product placement, behavioral targeting, and viral marketing to forge ongoing relationships between brands and individual gamers. Marketing through interactive games works particularly well for snack, beverage, and other "impulse" food products. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Gatorade, McDonald's, Burger King and KFC, for example, were the "most recalled brands" in an October 2006 survey of video game players.¹ Not only can marketers incorporate their brands into the storylines of popular games, they can also use software that enables them to respond to a player's actions in real time, changing, adding, or updating advertising messages to tailor their appeal to that particular individual. ² At a recent conference on interactive advertising, software developers explained how they purposefully create games to make them "in sync with the brand," ensuring that images players see in the game are similar to what "they see in the supermarket aisle…[and on TV] Saturday morning." Games must always be "addictive," should include a "viral component," and be "continually updated" to facilitate ongoing data collection and analysis.³

• Sony partnered with Pizza Hut to build into its "Everquest II" videogame the ability to order pizza. "All the player has to do is type in the command 'pizza,' and voila—Pizza Hut's online order page pops up," explained a trade article. "While it's just pizza now, the in-game purchasing potential is wide open."⁴
• At Viacom's Neopets.com—targeted at 8- to-17-year-olds—young gamers create and "take care of" virtual pets, earning virtual currency (neopoints) to pay for their upkeep by participating in contests and games. The site earns substantial advertising revenues from "User Initiated Brand Integrated Advertising—activities or games built around advertisers' products and services that help build relationships and generate revenues with Neopets visitors." For example, participants can earn points by buying or selling "valuable commodities such as McDonald's Fries" or "winning games such as Cinnamon Toast Crunch Umpire Strikes Out." Food companies that have sponsored various activities on Neopets include McDonald's, Frito-Lay, Nestlé, Kellogg's, Mars, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, Kraft Foods, and Carl's Jr./Hardees.⁵

 

1 "Coke, Nike Are Tops In Video Game Ads: Study," PROMO Magazine, 10 Nov. 2006, http://promomagazine.com/research/other/brands_videogame_study_ 111006/index.html (viewed 30 Mar. 2007).

2 Microsoft, "Microsoft to Acquire In-Game Advertising Pioneer Massive Inc.," press release, 4 May 2006, http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/ 2006/may06/05-04MassiveIncPR.mspx (viewed 29 Mar. 2007); John Gaudiosi, "Google Gets In-Game with Adscape," The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Mar. 2007, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/business/news/ e3i898ca0de1754206ae43bdbc6ee2d9ffd (viewed 30 Mar. 2007); Mike Shields, "In-Game Ads Could Reach $2 Bil," Adweek, 12 Apr. 2006, http://www.adweek.com/aw/national/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=100 2343563 (viewed 30 Mar. 2007).

3 Author's personal notes, Mixx Conference, Interactive Advertising Bureau, New York City, 25-26 Sept. 2006, http://www.mixx-expo.com/2.6/agenda.aspx.

4 Bourdeau, "The Kids are Online."

5 Jack Myers, "Neopets.com Fulfills Promise of Immersive Advertising," Jack Myers Media Village, 5 July 2005, http://www.mediavillage.com/jmr/2005/07/ 05/jmr-07-05-05/; "Google Adsense Case Study," Google, n.d., https://www. google.com/adsense/static/en_US/NeoPets.html. For advertiser lists, see NeoPets, Inc., "Thinkway Toys and NeoPets, Inc. Announce Licensing Agreement," press release, 17 July 2002, http://info.neopets.com/presskit/ articles/recent/yahoo1.html, and Myers, "Neopets.com Fulfills Promise of Immersive Advertising." See also discussion of McDonald's "branded shop" and General Mills games in Zachary Rodgers, "The Stickiest Site in the World," ClickZ Network, 16 Aug. 2004, http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3395581 (all viewed 2 Apr. 2007).