Tuesday, September 30, 2008

IGA Partners with Activision to Expand In-Game Advertising on PS3

Just when you thought advertising couldn't invade any more of your personal space, IGA and Activision just announced their plan to expand in-game advertising on the Playstation 3. Their next venture will be Guitar Hero World Tour , the latest installment of a glorified karaoke game which has become bestselling smash-hit. World Tour will feature the"integrated" ads, and according to the Market Watch article, research by Nielsen indicates that most gamers don't mind. (80%felt that the games were just as enjoyable with in-game ads.)
Two quotes in the story really jumped out from me, the first was from Justin Townsend, the CEO of IGA Worldwide.

To partner with them demonstrates the appeal of in-game advertising to marketers and consumers, alike. We will be able to connect more brands with engaged users than ever before.

The second quote was from Dave Anderson, head of business development at Activision Publishing.

We can increase the realism of our games by presenting consumers with authentic environments in genuine settings, while also expanding a key growth opportunity for the company.GA and Activision Publishing will work in tandem to integrate the advertisements into the titles in a contextually relevant way. All dynamic ads can be updated in real time, allowing for campaigns to change creative without a major reprogramming effort. Ads can be targeted to a number of different demographics and offer marketers a wide variety of measurement metrics.

So IGA/Activision model is to engage the consumer with a dynamic and interactive ad targeted toward a specific market. Sounds familiar? It's the same concept VideoEgg announced with AdFrames and the CPE ad format.Which begs the question, which came first, the IGA or the VideoEgg?

What does this in-game advertising indicate? Marketers will continue to invade the environments we used to consider as our "personal"entertainment space. To appease the consumer, they'll tweak and adapt their pitch to a point where it's not just relevant to the context of the entertainment, (I.E.- commercials before the movie previews at the theater) but the message will BECOME an element of the entertainment.

Posted By Matt O'Hern at 11:24 AM
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