Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - In-game advertising, now "interactive"

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Water Cooler Games

Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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In-game advertising, now "interactive"

by Ian Bogost July 25, 2006

categories: Advergames

I never tire of mocking the in-game advertising industry. The latest salvo in the ongoing saga is Massive, Inc.'s new "interactive advertisement technology," first deployed in Anarchy Online for Toyota Yaris. Here's the blurb from the press release:

The new technology allows players to interact with dynamic billboards in the game, making for a more memorable and interactive advertisement experience. The new Toyota campaign allows players of the free 'Anarchy Online' version to walk up to in-game billboards and interact with it to unveil the sleek new Toyota Yaris.

For those of you not "fortunate" enough to have had direct experience in the advertising industry, I should remind you that advertisers have no idea what "interactive" means. Granted, it's a squishy term for anyone, but in advertising "interactive" has basically meant "online." For those of us who think that computers are fundamentally machines that run code rather than boxes moving bits over networks, the term has always posed a problem. In the advertising business, companies have an "online strategy" or an "interactive strategy." Typically, that means delivering traditional media ads online. The "good" ones let you click on things.

I'm also amused by Massive's insistence that this sort of thing is a first. There and Second Life users have been browsing in- and out-of-game web pages for years now. Massive's innovation is something like a dynamically-delivered in-game interactive kiosk. And I don't know about you, but that's exactly what I was hoping for: to learn more about a mediocre economy subcompact auto while in a science-fiction MMORPG set in the year 29475 on the desert planet of Rubi-Ka.

Comments (5)

in the future, people will see advertisement as the cultural heart attack that it truly is

anonymous on July 25, 2006 8:52 PM

i agree that it is ridiculous what people claim to be 'interactive'. again i think it comes down to the people marketed to, the advertising execs, don't have any idea what 'interactive' means. they just know it sounds good. Massive isn't lying, there is a 'form' of interactivity. looking at something could be considered interactive, if you try hard enough. in the meantime, 'interactive' gets to mean 'online' and interactive technology isn't forced to develop. not that i really want the in-game advertising billboards in Grand Theft Auto IV to be that sophisticated. Unless, of course, 'interactive' means you can blow them up.

twel on July 26, 2006 6:23 PM

Random thoughts you've inspired:

It'll probably happen sooner or later that some advertising in games becomes better than the games themselves as is often the case with TV shows.

Advertisers care about context only inasmuch as the show or game being consumed matches some kind of market demographic.

I'm sure advertisers know what interactive means. Game folk tend to think they have a corner on the term because it's at the core of video game technology. But this is just high brow posturing. Advertising execs are not stupid, and interactivity is not a particularly difficult concept to grok. It's perhaps only a matter of time before advertisers realize that compelling interactivity equates to addictiveness (another concept they understand).

drdon on July 28, 2006 12:13 AM

the yaris ad execution was poor and if massive holds this up as the poster child for in game advertising, the industry will fail. I think smart product placement similiar to the movies and "interactive games" like Disaffected and the Axe campaign are techniques that will prevail.

gameboy on August 16, 2006 9:36 PM

This is definitely a subject that gets people fired up. At the risk of inciting more, I present a smaller, but fairly original case for in-game advertising.

www.cashsprint.com

We put brand names on cars and billboards in a racing game.

Stephen on August 17, 2006 9:23 PM