While most people wax lyrical about internet and mobile advertising, the gradual growing maturity of in-game advertising is really beginning to get into its stride. This week both Massive Inc, the Microsoft in-game subsidiary, and Double Fusion, a rival which works with PlayStation games, landed substantial deals. The other main player IGA signed up with Sony in the Summer and Google is still developing its options.
As more and more games have advertising inventory built in, and more and more consoles are sold which are online, this market could take off faster than mobile advertising.
In-game advertising networks now serve new advertising impressions online in real time as games are played, dropping advertising inventory into pre-arranged art segments, within interactive console and PC games.
Microsoft’s Massive even pointed out that Barack Obama made history by running the first in-game ad campaign to promote a presidential candidate. These adverts ran in battleground states across 11 game titles, included the message ‘Early Voting Has Begun’ along with a link to VoteForChange.com. It was considered one of the best ways of reaching the teenage male demographic.
One of the things about advertising within a video game is that it is an entirely new experience for both advertiser and viewer. It is not tainted with all the history and annoyance that goes with interruptive TV advertising for instance.
When in-game advertising was first discussed, many gamers almost became activists against the concept, but that resistance has since faded, and now the concept is almost universally embraced, partly because in-game advertising delivery was careful to avoid upsetting gamers.
Today what you get is a series of in-game experiences that augment the overall authenticity of the world inside the game. For instance in Grand Theft Auto when a player steals a car, and reaches to turn on the car radio, it is only natural that a genuine radio station, or better still, a radio station manufactured entirely for the context of the game, will come out of the radio.
The content of that radio might have an all points bulletin talking about the player, who after all has just stolen a car, but equally it might be ‘authenticated’ by advertising, specially made to reflect the context the game.
The same is true of in-game bill boards, roadside hoardings, TV sets, cinema screens etc.. Advertising should be there, like in the real world and it’s even better if the player gets a mention and if the advertising is skewed slightly to the crazy world within the game.
Unlike TV, games had an economic model before they had advertising. The advertising had to be laid carefully over the concept of gaming, without breaking what it already had. In the world of broadcast TV advertising instead (once upon a time, perhaps not now) took the position that without the adverts there would be no TV.
It is this consideration for an existing business model that has made companies like Microsoft’s Massive careful that its researches the medium, and continues to ensure and prove that gamers are not put off by the advertising. The net result is that it is an immensely powerful way of reaching behind the super-ego (that part of the brain which criticizes and prohibits the basic drives, fantasies and primal emotions) and it seems to gain instant approval.
It’s like the gamer is saying ‘I never used to like brand X, but when I found it had managed to get into my game, I realized that it was cool after all.’
Massive talks about how this has worked for Ford during a recessionary time when other advertising is not working. Ford ran a multi game title ad campaign to raise awareness of several of its vehicles. The campaign created a 28% brand lift when measured across several brand metrics and led to gamers searching for more information about Ford vehicles on the Ford Web site and at dealerships
With statistics like that, and the current recession being a brand manager’s nightmare, its not surprising that Massive has just made a number of key deals and has just hosted its first ever in-game upfront, where it parades future inventory over the coming game launches, and begins to auction them to advertisers. Massive has also signed new deals with Activision to include the latest Guitar Hero game, along with Quantum of Solace, Transformers and the latest Tony Hawk game.
During November Massive signed THQ in a global, multiyear deal as the exclusive dynamic in-game advertising partner for popular franchises on the PC and Xbox including Saints Row 2.
Massive has been in partnership with EA Games for some time on X-Box an PC based games and is working with Madden NFL, NBA LIVE, NASCAR, NHL, Need For Speed and Burnout Paradise.
Massive announcements this week also talked about further innovation such as the Text messaging ad campaign it ran for Subway. In this ran Massive encouraged gamers to send text messages to receive cheat codes and hints for the games while exposing the Subway brand. 67% of people who saw the campaign recalled it, and it created a 19% lift in brand rating, and 20% increase in gamers who visited Subway after seeing the ads, while 86% said the texts ‘made the game more realistic.’
Massive also had a scavenger hunt in a Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy game where gamers had to read the ads and follow clues left in them to get rewards later in the game.
Finally Massive experimented with advertising that could be destroyed within the game, so that items that appeared in the game like a TV set, can still be destroyed the same as anything else, which again adds to the authenticity of the sub-world created for the game.
Massive claimed that on average gamers that have seen averts rate the subject of the ad 31% higher than those who were not exposed to the ads and that 23% more gamers would consider the brand after seeing the in-game ads, while 21% more gamers would recommend the brand to others and 60% of gamers recall seeing ads in-game.
But while Massive, with Microsoft’s support, may be in the pole position, we can tell you from multiple driving games that pole position doesn’t always win the race.
Double Fusion announced deals on the PlayStation 3 with THQ, SEGA, Eidos and Midway Games, and in the past (though we’re unsure if they still work with them) had deals with Take Two Interactive.
Despite being private, Double Fusion talks about a record breaking sales year and high double-digit revenue growth, which to be honest to us sounds slow given the appeal of this market sector which could easily be triple digit.
‘One only has to look at the recent videogame sales figures to realize that games are the one form of entertainment consumers don’t want to live without,’ states Jonathan Epstein, president and CEO, Double Fusion. ‘We are pleased to partner with and provide incremental revenue opportunities to game publishers by offering advertisers a variety of hand-selected cross-genre games we know will be a hit with gamers and the marketers looking to reach them.’
Back in June Sony gave a public endorsement for in-game advertising and announced a relationship with IGA Worldwide as its ‘first’ network. Sony appears to be taking the way forward that it will provide Nielsen audience measurements to help attract advertisers, and ensure that games are not damaged by in-game ads, but then partner with all of the in-game players out there, possibly with the exception of Microsoft’s Massive.
IGA promptly cut a wide-ranging exclusive deal with EA Games on PlayStation with Double Fusion and Google’s Adscape likely to follow suit.
So in a way this is a two horse race, Xbox versus PlayStation, with Nintendo yet to make its position felt, and with Sony playing open house to other existing networks and Microsoft going with an in-house optioin.
It’s only a matter of time before Capcom (Street Fighter and Devil May Cry),
2K Games (Bioshock), Bungie (Halo, Myth), Midway Games (Mortal Kombat) and Ubisoft (Prince of Persia, Tom Clancy franchise) join Activison, THQ, EA and Take Two Interactive in having all their games signed up to one or more advertising networks and then this ad inventory would likely be measured in $ billions not $ millions.