In-game advertising involved into US Politics

In-game advertising is a growing market, and we see more and more ads on video games for consoles and online games as well.
Whereas spending on in-game advertising was around £32 million in 2005, the number for 2010 is estimated to be at around £1 billion.

I never really thought that in-game advertising would be so big and generate so much cash. It is a bit disappointing (in my opinion) to see that better designed games mean better designed ads, but anyway I guess it’ll make games cheaper (well we can still dream about that!).

We all know that something pretty big is happening in the USA now…the presidential elections.
I was really surprised to read the other day on searchenginejournal.com that Obama is actually using in-game advertising to promote his campaign in specific swing states.

Online ads are running on Xbox video games such as “Burnout Paradise”, “Madden NFL 09” or “NBA Live 08”. As I said, the ads are geotargeted to show up when people from states like Colorado, Florida, and Indiana play online. Those ads appear on stadiums signage or billboards depending on the game.

I don’t know if doing so will push Obama’s campaign but that’s definitely bringing advertising to a new level.
Apparently, Obama’s campaign is the first attempt to run targeted ads in EA Sports games aiming at men between the age of 18 and 34.
I really think that’s something clever. We’ll see what happens next!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 2:36 pm and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.