London, May 26, 2009
Despite being an efficient and effective method of advertising, many major brands and labels have yet to get into the in-game commercials and ads. Media analyst, Screen Digest, however, sees this as a temporary hitch, and predicts the in-game advertising market to grow beyond $1 billion dollars by 2014. According to the firm, the video game format contains a lot of qualities preferable and saught after by brands of all quality, including: “scalability, accountability, high levels of audience engagement, positive brand associations in often highly-prized games media and the opportunity to communicate with demographic groups that are proving increasingly hard to reach via other media.”
“Dynamic in-game advertising offers brands the same accountability as other digital platforms but in a more controlled environment than social display media and through a more standardized value chain than mobile advertising.” says Vincent Letang, Senior Analyst for Advertising at Screen Digest. “Like online video pre-rolls, in-game advertising fills a gap in online branding, bringing familiar formats such as virtual billboards and TV ads into the gaming experience.”
“Games are proven recession-beaters with an ad-funded online model that actually works.” adds Adam Smith, the Futures Director at GroupM, a digital planning firm. “There are many ways in which advertising can help evolve business models for video games and we have only just begun to explore that potential. Given gaming is now a mainstream leisure interest, in-game deserves the same consideration as mobile and social media.”