Have you ever wondered how gaming, advertising and marketing sectors come together? These sectors, which seem very different from each other at first glance, but they have entered into interaction in a very short time since the game industry has existed. You know that the marketing industry has included itself in every industry where there is a certain number of target audiences. In this blog post, we explain how these industries come together at the most basic level.

In the first step, we should mention the growth of the game sector. The first game in history made a splash to the public. It was developed by Brookhaven National Labs in 1958 and It gained great sympathy among the people. Computer games have developed more realistic and graphically more advanced. Maybe we can compare it with the cinema sector. For instance, in the United States, in recent years, much higher amounts have been obtained from computer games compared to movies (up to 11 billion dollars).

In 2014, an average of 35 million people took part in online games. Besides that, computer games started to be used as a marketing tool. A lot of companies took their places in the games to promote their products and slogans. Analysts have estimated that hundreds of millions of dollars have been earned through product placement and advertising within the gaming industry since 2004.

There are two types of advertising for computer games. These are ad-games and in-game advertising. Ad-games were developed to present the advertising message and brand data to the media. Over time, the brand or the advertised product has become the center of the game, and the game rules are built around the advertising message. On the contrary, in-game advertising is behind the rules of the game. The game and the activities within the game remained the main focus. This type of advertising is very different from commercials in movies and television advertising. 

This academic research, which we refer to as a reference, has directed its focus to this type of marketing communication practice and evaluated it from three perspectives. The first one is an acknowledgment of several studies in recent years on advertising in computer games and its impact on brand recall. The second one is, firm familiarity is a very important factor in advertising effectiveness. Third, the subjective experience of the situation is influential in advertising. This state of subjective experience is sometimes associated with the concept of flow.

Reference; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233894891_Communicating_brands_playfully_Effects_of_in-game_advertising_for_familiar_and_unfamiliar_brands