In-game Advertising Fails Miserably, Bunnyfoot to the Rescue
Today, a lot of (all?) sports games contain a horrendous amount of in-game advertising. Games such as Xbox 360 Fight Night Round 3 even features “Burger King” as your trainer (WTF?). But does that mean ads in sports titles work?
A behavioural research firm in UK called Bunnyfoot (I like this cute name) has proven that in-game ads don’t score in sports games.
Results showed a failure to capture the attention of the player in sports game which followed a real-world model of advertising, with the firm noting that, “current methods are not optimising consumer engagement and are failing to influence the consumer in any significant way.”
Advertisers who are going to have their ads feature in video games can look for Bunnyfoot for solutions as dumping money into games is easy, delivering a punch or two to gamers is not.
In-game Ads have a long way to go via gamesindustry.biz
1 Comment
In-game advertisement can be useful for brand awareness building (compare ads you see on soccer games). If done properly, they can actually make the game more “realistic” and immersive. It would be quite natural for a Texas Hold’em game to display poker ads.
Then, on other darker side – it can be done poorly without being useful for anyone.