Recently Ilya Vedrashko noticed that the Google ad area of his blog was serving up ads for two companies offering in-game advertising and marketing services, inGamePartners and Massive Incorporated. (Full post located here) Ads for the former touted the company as the “#1 name” in the biz while the latter proclaimed itself “the largest.” This mini ad-battle playing out on a blog about media and advertising (as Ren would say, “how meta!”) led Vedrashko to ask, “Is the war officially on?”
This is followed by a collection of quotes from recent articles and journals, including this one by inGamePartners CEO from Inside Gamer Online:
"We can do anything for product placement. So say you’re playing Counter-Strike, which is the game we’re currently integrated into right now; let’s say you’re in Counter-Strike and you’re getting shot. And you’re losing health. So there could be generic water over there, or there could be this bottle over here [holds a bottle of Poland Spring]. The generic water is worth two points of health back, you take this [Poland Spring], and it’s another seven. So you get value added five extra points for drinking this. So it gets positive brand attributes and people associate this brand with better health. So we can do stuff like that."
…and this one from an article about Massive Incorporated in The Register:
"There will be an eerie sensation when a game player walks down a street and sees that same advertising campaign, say for a major motion picture that is starting its run next week, using the same artwork and delivery format as one he saw that evening in a game that he bought 3 months ago. Research says that it enriches the gaming experience and we can't see anything wrong with that observation."
Eerie sensation indeed. This inevitably leads those of us in the virtual worlds community to wonder if 2005 will be the year advertisers start targeting MMOGs as well. We’ve already seen a few experiments with in-world product placement in various virtual worlds before (Intel and McDonald’s in TSO, Nike and Levi’s in There, to name a few) and have even broached the subject a few times in previous posts.
I’ll admit I have mixed feelings about this issue, myself. I know that many virtual worlds are valued as respites from the constant stream of commercial messages competing for our attention and money in RL. I believe it’s important that we be allowed to immerse ourselves in imaginative worlds without any outside distractions from the real world intruding into beloved magic circles and hindering our heroes’ journeys. And yet I don’t think all virtual worlds should shut themselves off from potentially lucrative advertising partnerships. There are some virtual worlds out there that are not about heroes’ journeys or magic circles, but instead function as centers of commercial activity and free enterprise and in these worlds the occasional advertising deal might actually make sense. Could 2005 be a breakthrough year with big deals leading to bigger worlds? Let’s put on our party hats and toast to that with some [insert favorite brand here] virtual champagne.
But here’s the thing. I want big ad deals to mean more than big billboards. I want advertisers, agencies, and developers to work together to produce campaigns that go beyond billboard impressions and token product placements (which are nothing more than mini-billboards that people are forced to view, after all). I’m an avid in-world shopper who is open to advertising in some of the virtual worlds I visit, but I am highly annoyed by interruptive billboards and gratuitous product placements. If that’s all we can expect in 2005, let’s keep the cork in that champagne. Worlds like There and Second Life have demonstrated that virtual worlds can host more innovative projects that go beyond the billboard concept and are a good fit with their communities. I want to see more projects like these and less of the forced product placements that seem to be popping up in the video game industry lately. Surely the interactive nature of virtual worlds enables more complex and rewarding opportunities that don’t reduce players to pairs of eyeballs viewing ad impressions.
On that note, I urge all virtual world developers to have the discipline to adhere to the following basic standards when considering future advertising partnerships:
The one thing all of these points have in common is the emphasis on maintaining a good player experience. After all, they may be potential customers for partners but they are first and foremost *your* customers. So let’s see some well-executed partnerships in worlds that make sense in 2005. And for goodness’ sake, let’s see something more creative and rewarding than virtual Poland Spring water bottles, Cingular billboards, and “stuff like that.”
Hi. This is pretty random but here goes...My name is Jenny Slafkosky and I'm a reporter with the Oakland Tribune (in Oakland CA). I'm writing a story for the paper on real cash economies in gaming. Would anyone be willing to share some opinions/insights with me on the subject? I'm happy to talk either by phone or e-mail. jslafkosky (at) angnewspapers (dot) com
Posted by: Jenny | Dec 30, 2004 at 16:43
Never trust a marketing weasel... they can subvert whatever well-intentioned rules you come up with: (This is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek post.)
Know your player community’s needs and interests and consider whether the brand/product is really a good fit for them.
Around dinner time, all enemies will have "Pizza hut" logos emblazoned on their shields. For breakfast it will be "Eggos waffles". Lunch will have "McDonalds".
Players on the other side of the world might get "Dominos", "Starbucks", and "Burger King".
Instead of forcing a brand/product on the entire player base, allow interested players to opt in to their interaction with the brand.
Users can join the "McDonalds big-mac-attack guild" or the "Burger King's Whopper guild". Joining entitles them to a few real-life cupons a year. The "catch" is that anyone that joins the guild has a flag set on their PC's database entry. If a guild member's PC is about to kill a non-aligned PC, the non-aligned PC is given the option of dying and losing all their loot, or submitting humbly to the corporation and joining the guild(as opposed to surrending and swearing allegance to the opponent's lord). Just think... corporations would have virtual armies fighting for their cause.
Don’t overexpose a brand/product by blanketing an entire world with billboards or product placements. Instead, place ads selectively in marketplaces, shops, and auctions where people explicitly choose to go when they want to shop. In some cases these may not even be in-world areas, but supplemental web sites.
Instead of NPCs wandering around yelling, "Bring out your dead!", they can be heralding, "Hear-ye, hear-ye, hear-ye: 30%-off sale at K-mart! Only until Saturday!".
TV tie-ins are especially easy... every time a monster fumbles and says "Doh" it'll make you think of the Simpsons.
Don’t allow a real-world brand to monopolize a niche market at the expense of user-generated projects. For example, if your world has a burgeoning market for virtual coffee tables and a furniture company wants to introduce branded coffee tables, give them priority placement but make sure the furniture makers in your community still have a fair chance to market and sell their own tables.
Yes, but virtual tables with advertising are subsidized by the advertiser, and only cost 12 gp instead of an ad-free table which costs 20 gp. Like wise, "Gillete's sword of shaving" is cheaper than the equivalent, non-branded magical sword.
I wish to reiterate something that I posted a few months back: Just ponder how much information a MMORPG can collect about its players, and which can ultimately be used by marketers to target their ads. Usage times, on-line behaviours, and even chat text are all available.
For example: A MMORPG could predict how often a player gets up for a break, either to the toilet or to the fridge. It could guess that such a break was about to occur and take the opportunity to advertise toiletries, or snacks and soft drinks. This advertising could be affected based on what time it is in the player's time-zone. From 1PM to 5PM advertise junk food. From 5PM to 7PM advertize pizzas, and even offer to order the pizza for the player, with only the click of a button. The VW might know that the player doesn't like pizzas, or just ordered one last night, and instead recommends a local chinese delivery. Then, from all the food it knows the player has eaten, it could recommend some good diet books.
Example: If a player spends an unusually large amount of time hanging out in the virtual-world's tropics, recommend a real-life trip to a resort in Bali. Why not model buildings in the VW's tropics after the resort in Bali? Why not insantiate the Balanese resort in the virtual world, except have the bartenders be elves?
Posted by: Mike Rozak | Dec 30, 2004 at 17:42
"The generic water is worth two points of health back, you take this [Poland Spring], and it’s another seven. So you get value added five extra points for drinking this."
Wrong! This merely deflates the value of health in the game, and will be factored in as the game adjusts to the lessened difficulty of gaining health.
Posted by: Factory | Dec 30, 2004 at 19:40
Out of necessity for the constant new need of channels, the advertising industry will come to virtual worlds more than they already have. I fret the day I see a billboard for my region's Renaissance Faire on my localized server in the game du jour.
I share everyone else's concern here with how product placement could *change* a game. However, as long as the stats on the Gilette Sword of Shaving (which would actually be a free pummel but blades which constantly must be replaced ;) ) are the same as Orc Big Slashum Sword, then the game system would be affected.
The *player* will be. But that's Betsy's first bulletpoint :) Demographics are key for the acceptability here. The TV sitcom Friends had an incredible amount of product placement, but it was handled well there, rather than paradied as it was in Truman Show.
Posted by: Darniaq | Dec 30, 2004 at 20:32
Betsy (quoting The Register)>Research says that it enriches the gaming experience and we can't see anything wrong with that observation
I wonder what "research" this is, and for whom it is "enriching"?
In the olde days, computer games that wanted to feature RL products had to pay the manufacturers of those products a licence fee. How times change...
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Dec 31, 2004 at 04:46
Darniaq > Out of necessity for the constant new need of channels, the advertising industry will come to virtual worlds more than they already have.
I think that the rise in advertising derives from pressures coming from two directions helped by developments in technology. Specifically, a few years ago there were a number of panics in media land:
One came from ‘time shifting’ i.e. TiVo and the like. The fe4r was that traditional advertising was doomed as more people watched programming off hard drives and simply skipped ads – if I remember correctly there was some war over ad skipping technology. The solution that was touted around was to embed advertising within programming in all kinds of ways – from simple product placement to integrating within the narrative.
The other related to the idea that the cost of video game production was rising faster than revenues – hence the industry would die or need to re-structure some how.
Now, things have not panned out quite as expected. Sure TiVo is popular, but it’s not _that_ popular – the current scare is over the figures that show that key demographics are spending more and more time with games to the ‘detriment’ of their TV watching. While the game industry seems to be de-risking by structuring its self round a version of the Hollywood model i.e. big production companies are holding risk across many projects and turning the industry into a venture capital play with completion bonds and all that good stuff.
Yet the underlying fears of cost and loss of audience remain. In game advertising seems to kill both of these birds with one stone. In fact, its better, you have a fantastic demographic and you have them in the palm of your hand for hours upon hours.
I’m like Betsy in that I don’t want ads and product placements where they are not appropriate and will ruin my gaming experience; I’m even prepared to pay some premium to have an ad free experience if that’s what it takes. I also love to shop for cool stuff and if I can do that in the commercialised virtual worlds then yay – bring on the virtual Gucci baby.
Posted by: ren | Dec 31, 2004 at 06:37
Ren>Yet the underlying fears of cost and loss of audience remain. In game advertising seems to kill both of these birds with one stone. In fact, its better, you have a fantastic demographic and you have them in the palm of your hand for hours upon hours.
Not sure if the relatively tiny game playing audience is all that interested in detergents and such... Sure you can market hardware effectively, but that is better done by brute force: runs best with hardware X. And you can embrace a product in games like racing games (make brand X perform better than all the others), but what about the developer's integrity? The ethics? The players who cares about cars will notice the cheating...
Sure, a few global products like Coke fit well for most games in modern settings. Indeed, when I made the drawings for the planet Mars in a graphical MUD (approx 1993-1994) i put a big Coke commercial on the red planet. :P More satire than advertisement really... There is lots of branded satire in computer games. So that leaves the question; product endorsement in games: advertisement or ridicule?
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Dec 31, 2004 at 09:10
Product placement in games, ridicule or advertisement? If *they* design the placement (or have final say), it's advertising. If *you* decide what goes in, and don't consult with the company in question, it's either for atmosphere or ridicule. ("Schaeffer - the beer to drink when you're too drunk to care about the taste")
I'm with Ren that I don't want to see product placements/advertisements in inappropriate places, or where they are too attention-grabbing. Hey, if the developers set up some billboards in the background of a Spiderman game, for instance, where you might expect to see a billboard in the real world, that would be cool with me. On the other hand, when it gets shoved in your face....
I used to get together with my brother and friends to watch movies. One of our traditions was that if anyone noticed something stuck into the movie for advertising purposes, they'd yell 'Product placement!' If I start thinking that when playing a virtual world, I'll be much more likely to let my subscription lapse.
Indy
Posted by: indy | Dec 31, 2004 at 11:17
Indy> I'm with Ren that I don't want to see product placements/advertisements in inappropriate places, or where they are too attention-grabbing.
You don't want to annoy the users in a multi-user setting, they might start anti-brand-X campaigns... You want more pervasive stuff like: drinking Coke temporarily increases your awareness-skill, using Amphetamine makes you more focused, using Boles makes you stronger, smoking Lucky Strike makes you sexy etc...
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Dec 31, 2004 at 12:35
Ads in VW's don't just have to be product placement or billboards. Those are techniques used in non-interactive entertainments. The ads can, and probably will be, interactive or in-your-face. Why?
1) The ad company is basically paying money and producing an ad in order to get your attention so you a) know about their product, and b) think about it.
2) People are used to seeing product placement and billboards all the time, and have built up an immunity.
3) Advertising companies need to get around this immunity. Notice how Internet ads used to be billboard on a web page, then became animated billboards, and now are animated with sound, and they BRING UP POPUPS that require you to find the tiny "close" button? It's because people ignore the old billboard internet ads (almost) completely.
A really annoying example might be a NPC that comes up to you and starts up a conversation. As a player, you're not sure if the NPC is a game figure or an interactive ad. After about 30 seconds of interaction, it goes into ad mode... just like companies that call you at home to sell newspapers, or knock on your front door and try to sell you knives.
For example: The NPC could be a chatterbot that happens to mention a product. Players won't know it's a chatterbot for at least 30 seconds, and by then the message will have been delivered... "Hi, my name in Geoff. I'm new here. Can you tell me how I do X?"... blah blah blah ..."Gee, what I wouldn't give for a cool, refreshing Coke right now. Oh, the vendor's over there! I'm off. CYA." No need to even pass the turing test.
Or, less annoyingly, the NPC could just wander by and hand your character a can of virtual Pepsi of healing. (Which combines placement and some interactivity.)
If you were playing an ad-supported online game you could expect 4-8 minutes of interactive or in-your-face ads per 30 minutes. TV uses 8/30, but that's because people miss half the commercials while they get up and take a break.
Posted by: Mike Rozak | Dec 31, 2004 at 16:33
Does Betsy Book really exist? http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=366012 suggests not? Pseudonym for man, perhaps?
Posted by: ronjohn | Dec 31, 2004 at 21:26
Google search almost empty, who is this Betsy Book, and where did he or she come from? Greg???
Posted by: bennyg | Dec 31, 2004 at 21:31
Mike Rozak> 1) The ad company is basically paying money and producing an ad in order to get your attention so you a) know about their product, and b) think about it.
Depends, they might aim for familiarity so you pick the less anonymous one when you face the 20 brands of detergents on the shelves... So yes, effective advertisment will be pervasive and tied to interactive objects, but doesn't have to be "in your face". Say, whenever you get the "coca cola gun" and suddenly perform a lot better you associate good feelings with the brand...
Agree with you on the billboards, they sound terribly inefficient. Who would even bother to start a campaign in smaller games if the effect isn't measurable? My guess is that those who dabble with this now do that to generate buzz, basically free marketing as media (and Terranova) pick it up... "we are on the frontier of marketing"... Blargh. :P
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Dec 31, 2004 at 22:50
There's a lot of talk (and supposedly research too) about alternate subscription/funding models for MMOGs. I wonder if you could fund an entire MMOG through advertising. Pepsis would be potions of healing, you attack people with Gillete razors and Mattel toy guns, and wear armor made by Gucci and Levi's. The chat channel might bear the title "People Magazine," and loading screens would of course be awash with billboards. And, oh! The tradeskills! The things you could make, buy, and sell!
Free to play, but if you want to get rid of all the ads, pay $50 a month.
Posted by: Slyfeind | Dec 31, 2004 at 23:21
ronjohn>Does Betsy Book really exist?
Do you?
>Pseudonym for man, perhaps?
Judge for yourself:
http://www.roaringshrimp.com/tn/pix/sop2_18.jpg.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Jan 01, 2005 at 05:19
If ads in computer games made people buy stuff, that would prove that computer games influence how people think. Therefore, any computer game that featured sex, violence or substance abuse should be immediately banned.
Would there be any left after this for the advertisers to advertise in?
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Jan 01, 2005 at 05:24
Slyfeind >There's a lot of talk (and supposedly research too) about alternate subscription/funding models for MMOGs. I wonder if you could fund an entire MMOG through advertising.
Have you checked out the rather disturbing Dubit or more overt Coke Music?
www.dubit.co.uk
www.cokemusic.com/home/newindex.jsp
Other fine fine links can be found on Betsy’s Virtual Worlds Review: www.virtualworldsreview.com/index.shtml
Posted by: ren | Jan 01, 2005 at 09:47
Mike Rozak>
For example: The NPC could be a chatterbot that happens to mention a product. Players won't know it's a chatterbot for at least 30 seconds,
A new meaning to viral marketing...
Too much subtlty, seems to me, invites raft of deception/ethical concerns. Take an exaggerated example...
Better, to force the player to wade through explicit advertisements than worry the ethics of slyly sneaking in random product words in PC/NPC chat, just for an example. Seems to me the former may only err on the side of a low-grade irritation, whereas the latter could really disturb folks if they get tripped up.
Posted by: Nathan Combs | Jan 01, 2005 at 16:37
Nathan Combs wrote:
Too much subtlty, seems to me, invites raft of deception/ethical concerns. Take an exaggerated example...
Better, to force the player to wade through explicit advertisements than worry the ethics of slyly sneaking in random product words in PC/NPC chat, just for an example. Seems to me the former may only err on the side of a low-grade irritation, whereas the latter could really disturb folks if they get tripped up.
Chatterbots might be a bit deceptive... Although the example I gave is merely a sleezy combination of telemarketers and product placement, both of which exist today.
Interaction could occur in other forms: Maybe a quest for 1st level characters is to go to the local vending machine and get a can of coke for one of the NPCs. (As opposed to hunting down the city's rats.) FedEx quests could, quite literally, be FedEx quests.
Posted by: Mike Rozak | Jan 01, 2005 at 19:03
I think there will be two category of advertisement: brand-building and cost-per-eyeballs. It appears most comments so far favors brand-building affairs if done appropriately and does not favors the junk mail strategies of advertisement. The former has qualitative results, but the have the quantitative results that will get a majority of the early adoptors to use the medium.
Just hope there is a policy against net porn ads :)
Posted by: magicback | Jan 02, 2005 at 01:01
Wow. Apparently my TN stick-on beard not only periodically erases my gender but sometimes even my very existence.
Anyway...Mike, I didn't think anything could be more obnoxious than in-game billboards, but the NPC salesbot idea beats that by a long shot.
Posted by: Betsy Book | Jan 02, 2005 at 10:18
The Register: "Research says that [in-game advertising] enriches the gaming experience and we can't see anything wrong with that observation."
The only research I've found lately on the "benefits" of in-game advertising has been conducted by Massive, Inc. In February 2004, Massive surveyed 200 gamers and found that "70% of interviewees indicated that incorporating ads in video games would greatly enhance the quality and realism of the gaming experience provided they were done well." [Emphasis mine] Those polled "stressed that products advertised in games should be appropriate within the game's context, that ads should not interfere with gameplay (whether game performance or narrative), and that ads should be entertaining, subtle and witty." As I pointed out in an August, 2004 article on in-game advertising, there are not only very few appropriate ways to advertise in a game world (not to mention that "appropriateness" degrades over time), but there are few genres that are suitable by nature for banner-style exploitation.
Betsy, with regards to Second Life advertising (I can't include There because I haven't experienced There), there are some interesting differences and similarities between user-created advertisements and corporate advertisements as they are perceived by Second Life residents. User-created ads seem to be more acceptable than corporate ads in general--I believe this is because there is a grass-roots feel to an ad from a virtual business--in many cases, there is negligible real-world benefit derived from user-created advertisements (the user is a virtual businessperson, not a real-world businessperson). The Second Life community's reaction to "real" businesses in-world has been mixed, but seems to be predominantly negative. The case of Fizik Baskerville and the Mrs. Jones fashion line comes to mind--as much as the move was applauded by some, it also appeared to be reviled by others. If there's one thing Second Lifers seem to agree on, it's that excessive advertising--even material created by users--is repugnant. I guess we all hate spam.
Posted by: Tony Walsh | Jan 02, 2005 at 21:20
Betsy, I have just discovered your paper on advertising and branding in social virtual worlds-- wish I'd seen it prior to writing my August article (or that I'd attended your 2003 presentation), I would have liked to interview you for the piece. Re-reading my above post, I realize that my comments to you in particular are not only moot, but might be taken negatively (the comments were well-intentioned). I shoulda done my homework better, sorry.
Posted by: Tony Walsh | Jan 02, 2005 at 21:35
Betsy Book wrote:
Anyway...Mike, I didn't think anything could be more obnoxious than in-game billboards, but the NPC salesbot idea beats that by a long shot.
Just don't blame me when it happens. Some mareketing weasel will reinvent the idea all on their own. I suspect I've reinvented it from someone's chatterbot's experiments 20 years ago.
The other disturbing advertising idea (in real life) I thought about was this... Talking fridges that blurt out ads once in awhile, and which nightly whisper to other applicances in the kitchen working out ways to sell food items... Just imagine your toaster recommending "Thomases English muffins" to you when you walk in the kitchen for breakfast. The fridge then chimes in that it has "I can't believe it's not butter" and "Smucker's Jam" to go on top of the muffins. Meanwhile, the breadmaker laments its idleness and schemes up ways of pushing the toaster off the counter.
When a team at Microsoft was producing a talking Barney (the purple dinosaur) doll, I jokingly recommended that they have it wake up in the middle of the night and whisper stuff (like ads) into the kids ears. Of course, they had enough morals not to impliment this idea, but someone will. Just imagine a capitalist version of Chucky (the horror film doll).
Posted by: Mike Rozak | Jan 03, 2005 at 20:32
Mike>
The other disturbing advertising idea
lol.
It strikes me though that there are two different types perceptions of "advertising" in play here: (1.) building brand/reputation, and (2.) close a sale or commitment at the moment... The latter seems like more compatible to a 'scorched earth' marketing strategy - spam works this way - just need a small percentage to buy in and don't really care what the rest think.
So far, however, the discussions of game advertisements seem to imply the former type... hence likely need to be sensitive to "disturbing" too many folk as well as reaching the few you might get. Put it another way, until games can charge your cell-phone for a sale, likely will not see to much spam. Or so goes the thinking...
Perhaps though, we might do with a virtualized Howler variant (ala Henry Potter):
http://www.harrypotterfacts.com/howler.htm
Posted by: Nathan Combs | Jan 03, 2005 at 22:43
Nathan> So far, however, the discussions of game advertisements seem to imply the former type... hence likely need to be sensitive to "disturbing" too many folk as well as reaching the few you might get.
Yes, except the free games will have to find ways to get you to pay for their services. So you may get annoying "advertising" (or rather annoying gameplay) to sway you into purchasing upgrades or other products from the game company.
Implicit advertising?
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Jan 04, 2005 at 04:25
I really don't see where the money for MMORPG publishers is in this?
Even at premium rates that a web publisher recieves for unique impressions or one-off branding deals I don't see the return to justify alienating your relatively small paying customer base of 250,000+ gamers.
I do understand the value in that market for advertisers with it's interactivity, but the other problem being it's such a small potential base of viewers, and I don't think they're prepared to pay the premium rates necessary to make this pay out well enough for publishers and ad companies.
Don't get me wrong, I have zero faith in many corporate executives who will more often error on the side of the dollar (regardless of how relatively small it may be) rather than the quality of the service, and inherant gaming experience. To some it'll be nothing more than another way to squeeze out another $50k/mo from their game, regardless of any damage done to the gaming experience.
I think the games that could possibly benefit from advertising or branded items would be few and far between, such as the SIMS and SIMS Online which has a heavy consumer focus to it, such as being able to buy a Sony Flatscreen instead of the generic one built into the game by default. But the extension of that would be Sony demanding that the TV never breaks in-game, or that when it does it's only serviced by a NPC Sony repair tech, ad nauseum by that end of the spectrum (Do you really think advertisers and their execs would worry about the impact on gameplay? they have their own goals in mind).
Overall I think this would be suicide for most major game companies to try with A+ titles. I can only wait to see the gaming mag reviews on the titles that do try to do it.
Posted by: Scott Shepherd | Jan 07, 2005 at 15:51