Animal Crossing, Fortnite, and NBA 2K all show how deeply advertising now lives inside games. In-game advertising has grown from a novelty into a serious channel, and it reaches players that traditional media misses. This guide covers where game advertising came from, the formats you can buy today, and how to match a campaign to the right kind of player.
Was Advertising Always in Video Games?
Not at the start. One of the earliest video games, Tennis for Two, built by physicist William Higinbotham at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958, carried no ads at all. Advertising arrived as games reached a mass audience. The turn came in the 1980s, and this idea came to fruition with the introduction of the advergame.
For those unaware, Advergame is a term given to a game that is made with the sole purpose of advertising a product or business; the first such example was Tooth Protector by Johnson&Johnson for the Atari 2600, created in 1983 with the purchase by mail-order only to customers and has subsequently made the game one of the rarest games of all time. Fast-forwarding to the 1990s, a new age in-game advertisements gained momentum and awareness, this was most prevalent in ways such as mail-in orders and direct sponsorship for demo discs on different gaming platforms such as the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. Ads in games took shape in different games of that time such as Crazy Taxi, released in arcades in 1999, where players drove fares to real-brand storefronts.
Different Types of Advertising in Video Games
Online video games of all genres have advertising within different spheres; however, ad placement in games is a topic that must be understood. It's simple in principle, placing your ad and bang, you're set... but is it that simple?
As mentioned before, advertising in gaming began in the late 1970s and the early 1980s with advergames; but that is not all that exists in the world of in-game advertisements. In-Game Advertisements, or IGA for short, is the broad term given to ads in games, advergames on the other hand are a form of IGA; a subdivision if you think about it.
Beginning off, advergames as previously mentioned were games built with the sole purpose of advertising a company, service, or product. In recent times, an example of this included Wendy's 'Smokey Shroom Sprint' as a way to promote their new mushroom-based burger. The campaign ran for a month and turned a product launch into something players chose to engage with rather than skip.
Secondly, we have the beginning of IGA's: Static Advertisements. The easiest way to explain this is you imagine a painting, it doesn't move or anything other than being there, that is what you have with Static Advertisements. Mostly prevalent in sports games such as hockey where game developers could place ads on the boards, this was similar to other sports games such as baseball where you have ads statically placed on the outfield walls that could be seen during home run animations.
Lastly, we have the complete opposite of Static Advertisements... Dynamic In-Game Advertisements. Without the technical know-how, it is what the initial first part said, it is just the opposite of Static; NBA2K by 2K Sports has made use of this in recent times as part of their My-Career campaign. While there is the use of static, the use of Dynamic can be seen in the product placement of Gatorade bottles that are shown throughout the video game and in cut scenes in the aforementioned MyCareer. Having your product showcased nowadays in dynamic ads can be a very competitive scene but also very lucrative, with State Farm having the 'Assist of The Game' as an achievement in the NBA2K series.
Advergames where you are making your own game, Static Ads where they are just placed and don't interact, and lastly Dynamic, where the possibilities are endless, which form of game ads will you choose for your business today.
Target Audience: Who's In Your Market?
So perhaps you have chosen which form of ads inside video games that you would like to proceed with, but you wouldn't necessarily place a beer commercial inside a kid's game would you? What are the different types of gamers that you will be targeting, based on research we can find roughly four types of gamers that would fit your market.
A useful starting frame is Bartle's taxonomy, created by researcher Richard Bartle in 1996, which sorts players into four motivations: Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers.
Achievers do as the name implies, they play to achieve anything and everything; every achievement to speedrunners. This personality gravitates to loot-driven first-person shooters such as Destiny and Call of Duty, or even MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft or Lost Ark where they seek to get the best equipment.
Looking through every part of Los Santos in Grand Theft Auto, exploring the vast open seas of Sea of Thieves, Explorers make up the next personality. These are the players that love to explore, love the game's story and everything about the lore of the game itself with eventually mastering the game itself.
Everyone loves a good chat, meeting a new buddy to go on a raid with; that brings us to the Socializer. Bartle's taxonomy describes the socializer as a player who plays for the people. They build, raid, and hang out together. Social titles are where a lot of brand engagement happens, because players in this genre like to partake in things together and share what they do in games. Popular games within this genre will primarily be non-competitive such as Minecraft, Terraria, and Cities: Skylines.
Last but not least on this list is perhaps the most aggressive of this bunch, but don't let that discourage you from advertising in these games; the Killer. These are the gamers that truly and honestly only care about themselves and their enjoyment within the game. Their main goal is to simply be the very best among all players.
Conclusion
Throughout this brief blog, we have discussed many features along with the history of advertisements within online games; once thought crazy and unprofitable, grew into an ever-growing business trend that continues to grow and adapt to the world ever-changing marketplace.
So what's next for advertising in gaming you ask? The real story is scale. Roughly 3 billion people now play mobile games, about 83% of all gamers worldwide, which makes mobile the largest single surface for in-game advertising. Persistent worlds like Fortnite and Roblox already host branded events, virtual storefronts, and playable experiences that draw real audiences. Augmented and virtual reality add more surfaces over time. The consumer "metaverse" hype of the early 2020s has cooled sharply, so treat AR and VR as an emerging channel to test, not the inevitable future of the medium.
Exploring the different forms of advertising in gaming to who exactly is in your target market, we have taken a brief view into the world of video game advertisements. Will you be using Dynamic In-Game Adverting to market to Socializer gamers in the latest game mode on Fortnite? There is a world of substantial opportunities that await advertisers of all industries for all potential genres and all potential markets. Explore all the different possibilities that await you as you seek out new and expanding surfaces such as mobile gaming and in-game environments while sticking to tried and true formats such as static in-game ads. Throughout this blog, we sincerely hope that if you have learned even a tiny bit, we will call that a success and a pleasure for you to read. Good luck and enjoy the wonderful world of video game advertising.
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