Video Game Product Placement

For those brands looking to target that elusive 15 – 34 Male Demo – you’ve got move towards integrating your product with video games. Not just product placement within the game, but cross-promotion and contests relating to release of new games. According to the study conducted earlier this year: 1. The more effectively an ad is ntegrated within a video game, the greater a gamer’s ability to recall that ad. In fact, 87% of research participants remembered seeing a high-integrated brand much more frequently than other less integrated brands. This indicates that when a brand appears throughout a game, and gamers must interact with it, that it has a strong positive impact on brand recognition and recall. Moreover, although low-integrated ads did not generate the same degree of recall, many gamers still were able to remember such brands by name, suggesting that even appearing in background advertising may still impact consumer behavior on some level. 2. Recall of In-Game Ads Can Enhance Purchasing Decisions Often, participants who recalled seeing a specific brand advertised in-game were much more likely to express an interest in buying the associated product than were participants who did not recall seeing the brand. In some cases, brands that elicited significant recall in video games generated the same, or even higher, purchase interest than those products advertised via TV. These findings suggest that, not only does effectively integrated advertising have a significant impact on product awareness and recall — among those who actively remember seeing the brands advertised — but it also has the potential to increase interest in buying a product to a level comparable to television advertising. 3. Gamers Generally Perceive In-Game Advertising Positively Of the male gamers who participated in the study, about 40 percent said that in-game ads made a game more appealing, and made them more inclined to buy the advertised product. Similarly, a solid two-thirds majority of active gamers reported that in-game advertising made a game more realistic, while nearly three in 10 noted that advertising in video games was more memorable than traditional television advertising. 4. One-third of participants agreed that in-game ads were more effective if they assist a game player in reaching a particular objective. This finding is consistent with the higher awareness, recall and purchase interest generated by high-interactive brands.