A new age of Product Placement is on the rise!
Product Placement in VIDEO GAMES!!!!
(source top: UBISOFT)
Video games have been a new frontier in reaching consumers. Product Placement has reached video games and has helped make a game more realistic to gamers and the fictional world(s) they live in.
To visually see and hear products that are included in a game can cause the consumer to be interested in the product or even want to buy the product.
(Source: Infamous 2)
An article dating from 2006 by Erika Brown of Forbes.com stated that "Today there are 132 million teens and adult gamers in the U.S., where nearly half of all households have a game console; marketers are desperate to engage this well-to-do audience. Spending on in-game advertising and product placement, $56 million last year [2005], will reach $730 million by 2010, predicts Yankee Group, a Boston research firm."
(Source:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13960083/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/t/product-placement-rise-video-games/)
Music Product Placement in video games is on the rise as well. Paul Christ of KnowThis.com states that "Game developers have taken advantage of the enhanced gaming environment by populating their software with numerous songs from the genres aimed at younger players...After playing a game for may weeks, the gamer may be exposed to a song well over 100 times."
With new games and new songs coming out, gamers will be able to listen to artists that they like on their favorite game that they like to play. From playing these games myself, some of the games incorporate buying new songs from itunes to incorporate in your playlist.
A lot of these features are mostly in every racing game out there.
Besides the music, racing games provide real-life advertisements that will cause the driver feel like he is driving pass real places.
(source top: http://blog.tusharnene.com/2010_04_01_archive.html )
(Source:
Some Racing games even contained Political Ad Campaigns form Obama.
(Source bottom: EA)
Burnout Paradise featured Obama Campaign ads.
Marissa Meli of ugo.com stated that "Barack Obama paid $44,500 for in-game banners encouraging Burnout Paradise players to vote for him in the 2008 U.S. presidential election."
Talk about some outside-the-box thinking.
Product Placement can be found in popular online games like Farmville located through Facebook.
In sports video games, advertising in the form of product placement can be limitless, especially when the newest Electronic Arts (EA) game comes out. These games range from football to hockey, baseball, soccer and so on. David Kiefaber of brandfreak.com stated in his article that "The study , commissioned by Electronic Arts on behalf of Gatorade, showed that in-game advertising across various EA titles increased household dollars spent on Gatorade by 24 percent."
Product Placement throughout games displays the creativity and ingenuity of companies trying to target the consumer. This in-game advertising has only begun to recently surface amongst brands everywhere, willing to have long-lasting advertisements.
Most gamers like myself tend to play a game we like often. In doing so, we are exposed to these Product placement hundreds, if not thousands of times throughout the playing of these games. If my favorite game in corporates "Snickers" ad or maybe a "Dominoes Pizza" ad, it might induce me to go buy that item when I am not playing my game.
Product Placement in video games more than likely have a bigger effect on the gamers than "we" realize. The question is for these companies is: how can they measure the outcomes of the Product Placements?
Chris Morris in his blog found one answer to this question. After debuting its Bing search engine in June 2009, Microsoft promoted the Google-competitor in a series of games, including “NBA 2K10” and “DJ Hero”.
After their first exposure to the ads, the percentage of gamers visiting and searching Bing increased by 108 percent, according to Microsoft. In fact, two-thirds of the gamers who visited Bing after seeing the ad were visiting for the first time.
The recall rate of Microsoft’s ads was a surprisingly high 71 percent – and, according to the company, 60 percent of the gamers it spoke with said they had a more positive opinion of Bing after seeing the brand in a game."
(Source: http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/study-video-game-ads-boost-real-world-sales-67.html)
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