A couple weeks ago, I fell upon this article on Advergames in MediaPost, covering a coming research report from Gartner. In general, the article is a nice paean to the continued promise of advergames, and it predicts growth in the segment, which is promising.

The cited Gartner report suggests three genres of advergames, roughly corresponding to reskinnables, custom-builts, and product-placers:

Interestingly, the report makes a statement in direct contradiction with some of my own positions on potential uses for advergames. How about this one:

When it comes to advergames, I think the more specific the application, the better. Retailer promotions are especially attractive, since POP couponing and other techniques can validate the success of the campaign.

Here's another one:

For product placement, this claim might ring true. But for casual games (still the majority of advergames), it's simply idiotic to think that consumers are looking for advertising content. They have plenty of games to play at home, at MSN Game Zone, or at a host of other places. As I've written before here on WCG, slapping product into a mediocre extreme sports game doesn't constitute engagement anyway. Consumers may be looking for answers, however, and sometimes games can help provide answers in better context than other forms of advertising. I think advergames really demand a return to demonstrative advertising: what can this product do for me? We've been so mired in associative advertising for so long, it's hard to imagine that demonstrative adverts could take a more subtle form than the 1980 National Geographic print ad. Don't think so? Try my all-time favorite advergame, the Britvic J₂O Toilet Training Game.