Got “in-game” ads?

Played any video games lately?

Notice any products from Jeep, McDonalds, Nike or Coca-Cola? Chances are, there are companies like these working feverishly (and paying a lot of dough) to place their product in the right game at the right time you’re plowing through it. 

More than that, this “in-game” product placement (also termed “advergaming”) is being managed, and now measured, by marketers, who hope to quantify and place even more ads in these video games.  And that very measurement – arguably in its relative virtual infancy and not without complex tracking issues is helping fuel a flood of ad dollars to the gaming arena.

Nielsen, which in 2005 began to measure the impact of in-game product placement—predicts ad spending on brand placement in video and online games could grow to $1 billion by 2010, from the $75 million in 2005, says Business Week writer David Keiley, in his article, ” Rated M for Mad Ave”.

Pumping the numbers, says Keiley, are the launches of Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3, which connect consoles to the internet in new ways, allowing advertisers to serve up and quickly change flights of ads, which in theory can be tracked, even with the complex technologies that are bogging down early attempts to quantify results.

Meanwhile, Keiley says, there are about 100 million gaming U.S. households with lots of lucrative 18- to 35-year-old male gamers increasingly interacting with a video screen instead of passively watching TV or zapping commercials using their digital video recorder —gamers who are accepting of product placements as long as they doesn’t interfere with the game or add to the game’s cost. 

That interaction, say corporate marketing types from really big companies like Chrysler studying advergaming metrics, is helping turn brand awareness into actual preference. And it won’t be too long, say analysts, before more accepted metrics will be reached that will track and measure advergaming much the way radio and TV reach-and-frequency is measured.