Advertising in video games

Promotional games are games that serve in an entertaining form of advertising, one speaks in this context of Advertainment or infotainment. Lately, these are mostly for computer games which is also called Ad-Games - are called - Ad stands for Advertising (English advertising). Many advergames are coupled to increase the attractiveness and to collect data with them can win games.

The most famous is probably the advertising game Moorhuhn game. Many well-known companies use promotional games as a promotional tool, both for customer loyalty as well as to attract new customers. Also non-commercial enterprises and institutions use advergames to spread their messages. Thus, there are also promotional games that are sponsored by educational institutions when they advertise, for example for the use of condoms.

Clients deal - unlike most other forms of advertising - here voluntarily and actively engaged in the advertising message and find out just entertaining with infotainment. This affects those advertising in any other way than, for example television advertising ( TV commercials ) or direct mail ( mailings ) that are passively perceived and therefore often perceived as a nuisance. This was the result the Bochum Institute for Applied Communication Research: "While nearly 90 % of all test subjects judge TV commercials to be annoying, pushes the advertising in promotional games with more than half in sympathy. "

In addition to the communication of brand and advertising message pursue business with Ad-Games usually the goal of obtaining address information for existing and potential customers. Thus, consumers of promotional games frequently have to register to use the full functionality of games or participate in sweepstakes linked to. The data are generally used for other marketing activities.

Promotional games for personal computers can be roughly divided into two groups, online games and conventional computer games, but there are also mixed forms.

• Online games are offered on the WWW and intended to draw for a longer period on the advertising message and, if appropriate, encourage more frequent visit to the website the attention of the players. Most times ( Shockwave) or Java such games in Adobe Flash, Macromedia Director are ( rarely also with powerful authoring tools such as Virtools or Wild Tangent ) written and can be played as platform independent.
• Online computer games are available for download ( download) or on CD. This ad- Games are mostly of image building, marketing or to introduce a product or service in detail and to increase awareness. Examples of this form of advertising include political game 1 of the Freedom Party, which was distributed on the occasion of the Austrian National Council election in 1999 on a so-called Shape- CD, as well as America's Army, which was used by the U.S. Army to search for recruits.