Speaking at the MI6 game marketing conference in San Francisco, JJ Richards of in-game advertising firm Massive discussed the ins and outs of the emerging field ¨C what he called ¡°in the games, around the games, and for the games¡± -- and pointed out the relative strength of games among other entertainment forms in the current climate.

Among entertainment forms, wow gold consumers plan to increase gaming spending more than any other type of spending in 2009, and studies also show games will see the least cutbacks among consumers ¨C valuable top positions for advertising in an economic slowdown. Males aged 18 to 34 also cite video games as their ¡°favorite leisure time¡± activity.

Also key to advertisers, Richards said, is how engaged users are with games ¨C they are leaning forward, gripping controllers in their hands, and paying rapt attention, whereas with other types of entertainment they may be much more distracted or ignore advertising entirely.

In-Game

Moving onto his three primary topics, Richards showed a montage of in-game ads in a variety of titles from publishers like Electronic Arts, 2K Sports, Activision, Ubisoft ¨C most of them sports games with integrated marketing or open-world games including billboards and other organic ad placement.

Richards distinguished between fixed in-game ads, which can be deeply integrated into a game and which will appear regardless of whether the game is connected, but cannot be updated; and dynamic ads, which are less customizable but can be integrated into real-world marketing campaigns and produced with a shorter lead time.

With fixed product placement, wow gold there are multiple levels of depth available: since those campaigns are hard-coded ahead of time, they can be as deeply integrated as a player's customizable clothing, an in-game cell phone model, and so on.

On dynamic ads, Richards referred back to the Obama campaign's in-game ad initiative, as mentioned by Peter Moore earlier in the conference, and pointed to the amount of additional media coverage that the ads generated ¨C thus further benefiting both Obama as well as general awareness of in-game ads themselves.

¡°That was a big win for us from the in-game side,¡± Richards said.