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In-game Advertising
by Steve Gibson, Aug 25, 2004 12:21pm PDTIn-game advertising has come up a few times here over the years as something we all expect to become popular sooner or later. It never really seemed to materialize into anything really big. Perhaps things are about to change though... Nielson Entertainment Media (The company famous for their TV ratings system) announced a little while ago that they are partnering with Activision.
Michael Dowling, general manager at Nielsen, said the technology is far more advanced than the People Meter, the device used by Nielsen Media Research to monitor the nation’s television viewing habits. The technology may involve a non-audible code inserted into the game that would be picked up by a Nielsen device. Nielsen is currently in negotiation with several game studios to insert the code in their next generation of titles. According to Dowling, Nielsen’s efforts will track not just impressions, but game play itself.The article goes on to give a couple other examples of developing in-game advertising technology.
Comments
There are a lot of games where forcing ads in could potentially compromise the games content. If done right, maybe it could work. For example a game like morrowind, if there were old style ads posted up in the village, for current products just done up in a way that was more cohesive to the game world you were in - it could work. Take a game like Metroid or Beyond Good & Evil... advertising in those games just simply cannot work. And it shouldn't work.
Hopefully if this becomes a standard, it sticks to sports games, racing games, and other genres where it would actually have a place in furthering the content of the game world.
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As for ads, if games with ads cost less I'd be all over that...but I doubt they'd give up a piece of the pie
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America's Army is a great example of this. A free game that advertises something.
Oh and don't fuck with my gameplay a la the sims online and McDonalds
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Seriously though, when you think about it, spam could have had "noble" roots, imagine, only 'knowing' or reading ads you actually (Dare I say it ?) WANT or are interested in.
Of course, the idea was turned into what it is now = the enemy of all that is good and free (Like Taco Tuesday @ Del Taco for example).
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If it's a more intrusive "ad", as opposed to simple texture on billboard, is not actually adding to my gaming experience, and I'm paying three times the cost of a DVD for the game, then I'm definitely against it.
If it means significantly cheaper quality games, that's fine, as long as you can pay more for an ad free version.
The cost of games is already well in excess of movies, and music, so they'd really want to watch what the fuck they do.
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Then someone will create a pop-up ad blocker for that game and charge for it.
Ah capitalism.
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Please don't leave me Schlotzky's. =( I <3 your delicious sandwich awesomeness.
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Taking aim, you cut loose with a volley of chaingun bullets. The bullets ricochet off her gyrating body! Oh nos! Pepsi's contract says she can't be destroyed.
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I think I'd definitely go for it. However I can't see it actually working like TV does. (or used to)
At least, not for a single player FPS. In an MMORPG, it could probably work just due to the massive amount of exposure time available, but people may be more willing to spend $15 to go a month with no ads.
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[ plays Super Monkey Ball ]
Must.. eat.. DOLE BANANAS!
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Would be funny consequences though. Someone could go on a rampage and blow up Coke billboards nation-wide and blame it on videogames for not letting him to it in game.
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So, if that trend continues, where they take you out of the game to advertise, then boo-urns.
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If this gets out of hand with games, I'll just stop playing them.
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Leela: Of course.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams! Only on TV and radio... And in magazines, and in movies, at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in video games dreams!
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Its kind of like the gmail argument. Most people should know that e-mail is sent in plain text, but having a database server that sifts thru all of our e-mails, electronically reading them, and storing the information, that's a little orwellian...