Digital Age

It’s bad news for opponents of in-game advertising—the results of the “most exhaustive” study yet, investigating the effects of advertising in games, were released today. While “exhaustive” seems to mean 1,350 young male gamers, the results are encouraging to advertisers, showing that 69% remember seeing certain ads as they play. More interestingly, Nielsen Entertainment found that gamers actually like in-game ads, as they provide added realism.

With advertising looking increasingly likely to creep intoXbox 360 games, as well as already being included invarious MMOs, will we have to go entirely offline to avoidadvertisements? Bringing ads into games is a logical step for companies, since television viewing is becoming lessfrequent amongst young people. However, there are moreinteresting ways to get gamers interested in your product than by slapping a clunky billboard in-game; while thesemost recent study results show that people remember ads, will they cause them to buy the product?