Comments on: What’s the future of advertising?

By: Wayne Smallman

Wayne Smallman — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:00:41 +0000

Hi Nick, those things sadly aren’t going anywhere. They’re certainly not the future of legitimate advertising, but they’re bound to be the future of spam and will continue to annoying!

Because ‘blogging is a good venue for conversational marketing, it’s probably the right time for “advertorials” to make the big leap from print to web.

I suppose PayPerPost will say they’re doing that kind of thing already, but the emphasis is all wrong.

Thanks for the comment, Nick. Speak soon…

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:37:43 +0000

To be fair, I can’t imagine popup ads, roll down ads or any other cheap attention grabbing online advertising techniques ever not being annoying. There must be some correlation between bad products/scams and the level of annoyance of adverts. With good products, less is more.

By: Wayne Smallman

Wayne Smallman — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:41:08 +0000

Now you’ve got me going! I’ve written a ton of stuff on this subject. LOL

You’re right, in-game advertising is here to stay. But on the whole, it’s not intrusive, which is the key difference.

There are also different types of media that can be woven into games, which sort of steps over advertising and goes direct to sale, such as in-game music, as an example.

Anyone who’s played Grand Theft Auto will attest to the great selection of tunes on the radio when you got in a car!

Fairly recently, Hellgate: London becaome a good example of bad ad’ intergration, which kicked up an unholy stink by all accounts.

The level of sophistication in video games is only ever going up, as will the price — as you mentioned. My theory is, the games developers and the movie studios will have to work together to help cut costs and increase the realism of a game.

In the end, from the point of view of in-game advertising, the consumer decides. It just depends on how much we let the games developers get away with…

By: doug m

doug m — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:24:08 +0000

unfortunately it won’t die out, look at burnout paradise, madden, or any other EA game. they are loaded with advertisements but the consumer never sees a discount on the price of the game. it will never change because games keep getting more expensive to create, and the people want more money to create them.

By: Wayne Smallman

Wayne Smallman — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:08:39 +0000

Hi Doug! The principle stumbling block with RFID technology is that of privacy infringement.

The arguments for were always about the increased level of control over goods and sales patterns. But the feeling is that the downsides outweigh the good stuff.

“My problem with in-game advertising is that advertising is supposed to help cover the costs of development, but they still charge the same amount to buy the game.”

Which is exactly the point I make in the linked article on that subject.

Chances are, some idiot studio is going to roll out a video game that’s totally overloaded with commercial endorsements.

The plus side to this is that title will die a quick but exceptionally painful death…

By: doug m

doug m — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:40:56 +0000

i think a new form of advertising could go hand in hand with RFID, where the RFID tag would contain certain information about location, age, sex, likes, dislikes, and then could be linked with any advertising medium to display the most relevant ads that are specifically targeted at that one person. everyone has different likes and dislikes, even within the same small group.

My problem with in-game advertising is that advertising is supposed to help cover the costs of development, but they still charge the same amount to buy the game. so where’s the money going form the advertising? other than the obvious place (the pockets of the CEOs)