skip to main content
10.1145/1690388.1690404acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesesemConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Product placement in interactive games

Published: 29 October 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Modern computer and video games offer a dynamic means of interactive advertising for a wide range of commercial products. This article details an exploratory study in the area of interactive, in-game advertising. Various key forms of interactive advertising are outlined, and a survey conducted to elicit the views from gamers and industry experts on their attitudes towards the use of such advertising in modern games. The results draw attention to issues of effectiveness, current and future usage, impediments, and financial concerns concerning the use of interactive advertising. Amongst the key findings, industry experts expressed unfairness in the lack, and even complete absence, of royalties paid by advertisers to games developers, despite evidence to indicate that in-game advertising is effective in creating extra awareness for certain brands. A balanced financial arrangement is strongly advised, particularly in view of spiraling game development costs.

References

[1]
ESA (The Entertainment Software Association), 2006, "2006 Essential facts about the computer and video game industry", The Entertainment Software Association, retrieved from: http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.php (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[2]
ELSPA (The Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association), 2004, "Chicks and joysticks: an exploration of women and gaming", The Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association, retrieved from: http://www.elspa.com/about/pr/ (accessed on 3/1/2009), p. 10.
[3]
C. Hackley, 2005, Advertising and Promotion: Communicating Brands, London: SAGE.
[4]
M-M. Ipser, E. Beeman, and R. McShaffry, 2000, "Ask Mary-Margaret #5: Licensing issues", Gamasutra, retrieved from: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000629/askmm_pfv.htm (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[5]
M. Nelson, 2002, "Recall of brand placements in computer/video games", Journal of Advertising Research, March -- April, pp. 80--92.
[6]
V. Diamante, 2005, "E3 report: new practices in licensing and ancillary rights", Gamasutra, retrieved from: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050523/diamante_01.shtml (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[7]
R. Afshar, C. Jones, and D. Banerjee, 2004, Advergaming Developer's Guide: Using Macromedia Flash MX 2004 and Director MX, Hingham, Massachusetts: Charles River Media.
[8]
M. Nelson, H. Keum, and R. Yaros, 2004, "Advertainment or adcreep game players' attitudes toward advertising and product placements in computer games", Journal of Interactive Advertising, vol. 5, pp. 3--30.
[9]
M. Svahn, 2005, "Future-proofing advergaming: a systematisation for the media buyer", Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment, IE2005, pp. 187--191.
[10]
N. Maragos, 2005, "Serious games summit: advergaming for private and public interests", Gamasutra, retrieved from: http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2005/features/20050307/postcardmaragos2.htm (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[11]
I. Chaney, K-H. Lin, and J. Chaney, 2004, "The effect of billboards within the gaming environment", Journal of Interactive Advertising, vol. 5, pp. 54--69.
[12]
T. Farrand, D. Nichols, T. Rowley, and M. Avery, 2006, "Brands and gaming: are you ready to play?", Young Consumers: Insight and Ideas for Responsible Marketers, vol. 7, pp. 8--13.
[13]
S. Brierley, 2002, The Advertising Handbook, London: Routledge.
[14]
BBC, 2004, "Ads in video games set to rise", retrieved from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3727044.stm (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[15]
BBC, 2005, "Global ad network eyeballs gamers", retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4485959.stm (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[16]
D. Grigorovici, and C. Constantin, 2004, "Experiencing interactive advertising beyond rich media: impacts of ad type and presence on brand effectiveness in 3D gaming immersive virtual environments", Journal of Interactive Advertising, vol. 5, pp. 30--53.
[17]
ESA (The Entertainment Software Association) 2005, "Game player data", The Entertainment Software Association, retrieved from: http://www.theesa.com/facts/gamer_data.php (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[18]
A. Berger, 2004, Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture: Advertising's Impact on American Character and Society, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Pub.
[19]
OFCOM (Office of Communications), 2004, "Economic analysis of the TV advertising market", OFCOM, retrieved from: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/atoz/?letter=E (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[20]
TV-Turnoff Network, 2006, "Facts and figures about our TV habit", retrieved from: http://www.tvturnoff.org/factsheets.htm (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[21]
EDGE, 1999, "LeMans 24 hours", Bath: Future Publishing, Issue 69, pp. 36--39.
[22]
EDGE, 1999, "Gran Turismo 2", Bath: Future Publishing, Issue 71, pp. 26--27.
[23]
EDGE, 2000, "Ferrari 360 Challenge", Bath: Future Publishing, Issue 84, pp. 54--61.
[24]
BBC, 2005, "Actors avoid video games strike", retrieved from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4076184.stm (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[25]
BBC, 2005, "Actors guild rejects games deal", retrieved from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4122264.stm (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[26]
L. Herman, 1997, Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of Videogames, Union, NJ: Rolenta Press.
[27]
R. Dungan, 2001, "The rights stuff", The Market for Home Computing and Videogames (MCV), Hertfordshire: MCV Media, Issue 162, pp. 22--24.
[28]
P. Jobling, 2002, "Brand values", The Market for Home Computing and Videogames (MCV), Hertfordshire: MCV Media, Issue 181, pp. 16--18.
[29]
P. O'Luanaigh, 2001, "Licensed to thrill", Develop (Issue 8), Hertfordshire: MCV Media, 26--7.
[30]
T. Green, 2001, "The time of our lives", The Market for Home Computing and Videogames (MCV), Hertfordshire: MCV Media, Issue 146, pp. 14--15.
[31]
D. Boutros, 2005, "Straight to video games", The Market for Home Computing and Videogames (MCV), Hertfordshire: MCV Media, Issue 337, pp. 22--23.
[32]
EDGE, 2004, "The chronicle of Riddick", Bath: Future Publishing, Issue 139, pp. 48--51.
[33]
B. Ip, 2003, Analytical Approaches to Games Development, Doctoral thesis, University of Wales, UK.
[34]
B. Ip, and G. Jacobs, 2005, "Segmentation of the games market using multivariate analysis", Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing, vol. 13, pp. 275--287.
[35]
J. Pallant, 2001, SPSS Survival Manual, Buckingham: Open University Press.
[36]
EDGE, 2004, "Advergaming: a lifeline for developers?", Bath: Future Publishing, Issue 137, pp. 10--11.
[37]
AutoExpress, 2004, "Be lord of the 'ring in 1", http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/49230/be_lord_of_the_ring_in_1.ht ml (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[38]
M. Tsang, G. Fitzmaurice, G. Kurtenbach, and A. Khan, 2003, "Gamelike navigation and responsiveness in non-game applications", Communications of the ACM, vol. 46, pp. 56--61.
[39]
BBC, 2005, "Price fears for next gen games", http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4562705.stm (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[40]
Y. Guillemot, 2005, "Playing the future: Yves Guillemot", BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4703767.stm (accessed on 3/1/2009).
[41]
EDGE, 2005, "Metropolis now", Bath: Future Publishing, Issue 153, pp. 42--49.
[42]
EDGE, 2005, "Test Drive Unlimited", Bath: Future Publishing, Issue 153, pp. 30--31.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Markaların Oyun İçi Reklam Uygulamaları Üzerine Bir AraştırmaKritik İletişim Çalışmaları Dergisi10.53281/kritik.15672356:2(318-340)Online publication date: 28-Dec-2024
  • (2014)Game advertising: a conceptual framework and exploration of advertising prevalenceThe Computer Games Journal10.1007/BF033959483:1(95-124)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2014
  • (2012)Paximadaki, the gameProceeding of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference10.1145/2393132.2393195(287-290)Online publication date: 3-Oct-2012
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Reviews

John M. Artz

As more people spend more time with video games and less time with other entertainment media, such as television, advertisers must explore new channels for exposing their products to potential customers. For example, one growing area is the placement of products in video games. But is this a good thing__?__ On the one hand, it provides additional revenue to support the development of games. On the other hand, it may detract from the player's experience. This paper surveys game players and industry experts on the issue of placing products in video games for the purposes of advertising. The paper is well written, and the results are nicely presented and thoroughly discussed. Ip provides not only statistical summaries, but also respondents' comments that underscore key points. From this perspective, the paper is well worth reading. Unfortunately, the paper suffers from the standard criticism of survey research: it is not embedded in any theoretical model. Instead, Ip constructed a list of questions, the respondents answered the questions, their responses were tallied, and the results were presented. There is no research question and no hypothesis, and the questions are not grounded in any way. So, the reader is left with the following sentiment: "Well, that was interesting, but where do you go with it__?__" In fairness, one has to acknowledge that it is a proceedings paper-and a fairly high-quality proceedings paper at that. Furthermore, since this is an emerging area, theoretical models are limited. Nonetheless, it would be nice to see hard work such as this include some theory. Online Computing Reviews Service

Access critical reviews of Computing literature here

Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
ACE '09: Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology
October 2009
456 pages
ISBN:9781605588643
DOI:10.1145/1690388
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • Foundation of the Hellenic World

In-Cooperation

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 29 October 2009

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. computer games
  2. interactive advertising
  3. interactive media
  4. product placement
  5. video games

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

ACE '09
Sponsor:

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 36 of 90 submissions, 40%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)12
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 15 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Markaların Oyun İçi Reklam Uygulamaları Üzerine Bir AraştırmaKritik İletişim Çalışmaları Dergisi10.53281/kritik.15672356:2(318-340)Online publication date: 28-Dec-2024
  • (2014)Game advertising: a conceptual framework and exploration of advertising prevalenceThe Computer Games Journal10.1007/BF033959483:1(95-124)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2014
  • (2012)Paximadaki, the gameProceeding of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference10.1145/2393132.2393195(287-290)Online publication date: 3-Oct-2012
  • (2012)53.090 virtual rusks = 510 real smiles using a fun exergame installation for advertising traditional food productsProceedings of the 9th international conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment10.1007/978-3-642-34292-9_15(214-229)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2012

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media