Advergaming Explained

A New Generation of Advertising

If you’ve played mobile games before, you’ve most likely seen banner ads along the bottom, top, or sides of your screen. Other mobile games display video ads during transition periods, such as completing a turn or advancing to the next level. Words with Friends is a good example of these advertising methods, as the game displays both banner and video ads.

“Advergaming”—which is the general term for advertising in video games—occurs in various ways, not just banner ads. It’s also much more prevalent than you may think.

A popular type of advergaming is the advergame itself: a playable, branded video game generally found on the web. Specifically, many food companies have created advergames, including Doritos VR Battle in 2016 and Sour Patch Kids’ World Gone Sour in 2012. In fact, a few years ago, food companies were under fire for their advergames because the games served as a “reward” for eating junk food.

Advergames have also appeared on popular console and handheld gaming systems. Build-A-Bear Workshop released a video game for the Nintendo DS in 2007. M&M’s featured its candy characters in a 2008 PlayStation 2 game. The U.S. Army developed various first-person shooter games to promote recruitment. One of these games was America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier, which debuted on the PlayStation 2 in 2005.

Although advergames have proliferated recently, we’ve been exposed to them for some time. The term “advergame” was first coined in 2001, but companies were thinking about it before the 21st century. A popular advergame from the 1990s was Chex Quest, a first-person shooter designed to promote Chex cereal. Advergames have been with us since the days of 8-bit and 16-bit graphics.

Another type of advergaming is product placement, except brands are placed in video games, not television shows or movies. Imagine playing an open-world, post-apocalyptic, first-person shooter. Your character traverses the remains of a major metropolis and encounters a beaten-up Coca-Cola billboard from before the apocalypse. Because the billboard is naturally integrated into the game’s environment—the ad is worn to match the derelict city—gamers most likely won’t think twice about Coca-Cola’s product placement, especially because the soda represents a prior luxury not accessible to characters in the game. In other words, the product complements the game’s narrative. The same ease of integration applies to racing games—it’s natural to see brands such as Ford, Dodge, and Nissan represented on the racetrack.

Of course, product placement can be too intentional or overt, therefore acting as a detriment to the ad. There’s a balance to strike. Conspicuous instances of product placement can unsettle gamers and lead them to distrust a brand.

Whether advergaming manifests itself through banner ads, product placement, or advergames themselves, it’s an effective, integrated method of advertising that reaches a large audience. Video games especially provide a key advertising market because gamers are accustomed to the presence of ads. Some gamers would even say ads are a necessary trade-off to enjoy video games. This trade-off logic makes sense when we consider popular “freemium” games that can be downloaded free of charge. These freemiums often feature banner and video ads that gamers cannot block or skip.

Because of the popularity of advergaming, we’re bound to see advancements in the advertising method in the foreseeable future.