In-game advertising can indeed be effective and boost sales, a study commissioned by Electronic Arts has unsurprisingly concluded.
The study revolved around advertising for Gatorade in EA's games NHL 09, NHL 10, NBA Live 07, NBA Live 08, NBA Live 09 and NBA Street Homecourt, which featured the sugar water brand on places including arena signs, water bottles and score updates. Read more »
Realtime Worlds' All Points Bulletin (APB) will be released tomorrow with pre-order customers already causing chaos in the crime-filled massively-multiplayer shooter and/or socializing game. The game has a unique payment structure, which allows players to buy blocks of hours to play in the game's 'Action Districts' -- where all the shooting happens -- or simply purchase a monthly subscription.
Following the revelation that "high-resolution dynamic video ads" had been implemented into the loading screens of Wipeout HD and could nearly double load times when they appeared, publisher Sony has pulled the most prevalent advertisement.
"The ad has been removed," Sony told Eurogamer, "and we are investigating the situation to ensure that any in-game advertising does not affect gameplay." Read more »
Update: Sony has now pulled the most common video ad, a commercial for State Farm, and vowed to "ensure that any in-game advertising does not affect gameplay."
Original: In-game advertisements recently added to Wipeout HD are nearly doubling the load times of some races, Shacknews can confirm.
Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello, speaking at the Dow Jones/Nielsen Media and Money Conference, acknowledged the game community controversies surrounding DRM and in-game advertising.
"I personally don't like DRM. It interrupts the user experience," confessed Riccitiello. "We would like to get around that. But there is this problem called piracy out there," he conceded, according to a report of the event on Yahoo!. Read more »
In-game advertisements for Democratic president candidate Barack Obama are running in more than just the Xbox 360 version of Burnout Paradise, with publisher EA confirming to AP that the ads will now appear across 10 titles, including Madden NFL 09.
Furthermore, the Obama ads are geographically targeted to 10 "battleground states"--Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Colorado, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, and Wisconsin--according to GameSpot. Read more »
Hot on the heels of the news that the games industry likes presidential candidate Barack Obama comes confirmation that the feeling's mutual: Obama is running in-game ads in Criterion's Burnout Paradise.
"I can confirm that the Obama campaign has paid for in-game advertising in Burnout," said publisher EA's corporate communications director Holly Rockwood to GigaOM. Read more »
Online search giant Google has launched a new public beta of its popular AdSense advertising software, which will allow developers to integrate ads into their games.
Dubbed AdSense for Games, the program is currently only compatible with web-based Flash efforts and stems from a partnership with ad middleman Mochi Media. "We don't make games," reads Mochi's official site. "We make games profitable." Read more »
"I hope someone makes a NoScript or Adblock program for games."
- Sailor of Fortune
See all 9 comments
Activision has inked a deal with IGA Worldwide, the in-game advertisement firm, to serve up ads inside future Activision titles on PlayStation 3.
The first title affected by the Activision deal is to be Neversoft's Guitar Hero: World Tour, due October 26. Other terms of the contract were not disclosed.
Free-to-play PC games are becoming more numerous than ever, but the industry should beware following an advertising-driven business model like television, according to Todd Eckert, the head of the North American branch of European studio Eutechnyx.
"[An advertising model] took a lot of creativity out of television because it became so focused on the money as opposed to the content. I would hate to see that happen to games," Eckert said to GamesIndustry. Read more »
Internet giant Google is currently testing software that could bring the company's AdSense advertising protocol to PC and console games.
According to sources speaking to VentureBeat, the software is said to make use of a game's characters to introduce video ads, saying something similar to "and now, a word from our sponsor." Read more »
Sony Computer Entertainment today announced a partnership with advertising agency Double Fusion to bring in-game advertising to PlayStation 3 titles.
Double Fusion, whose roster of clients includes Gearbox Software, NCSoft and THQ, utilizes specialized technology to deliver dynamic and context-oriented advertisements to audiences. Read more »
82% of PC gamers feel that games are "just as enjoyable with ads as without," according to a new study from research group Nielsen. After viewing an in-game ad, an average of 61% of consumer opinions regarding the brand were favorably increased.
Commissioned by in-game advertising firm IGA Worldwide, which just recently partnered with Sony for in-game PlayStation 3 ads, the study was performed across 1,300 PC gamers. Surprisingly, those "most opinionated about in-game ads" reported that the ads had a higher-than-average positive effect on brand opinion. Read more »
Sony Computer Entertainment America and Europe today revealed that the PlayStation 3 will soon support in-game advertising, a move the companies claim to make the system "a dynamic in-game ad platform."
No specific details were provided as to how invasive the integration may be, though SCEA senior VP Phil Rosenberg said that ads "organic to the environment" help create "a richer experience for gamers." Read more »
MMO developer NCsoft today announced a new partnership with Double Fusion to supply in-game advertising for City of Heroes, releasing several images of the game world before and after ad integration.
The companies say that the real world ads will lend a sense of realism to the super-powered world of City of Heroes, with players able to opt out of the advertising if they so choose. Additionally, NCsoft plans to make use of the technology to display player-created content within the game. Read more »
"What? We did this and they just routed our cable through a fancy box (and punched a whole in ..."
- Agrona See all 17 comments