Does it really work? Ingame advertising has been around for quite some time and ad agencies have been formed entirely around that one medium. Massive Inc, formed in 2004 is one of them. Today Massive (a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft) released a report in collaboration with Nielsen Entertainment that shows that “advertising within highly engaging gaming experience is shown to have significant positive impact on purchase consideration, ad recall and ‘coolness’ perception of brands”. The study involved more than 600 gamers across North America spanned industries including automotive, CPG, fast food and technology tools. The lucky gamers were divided into a control and test group and "forced" to play "Need for Speed(TM) Carbon" (Electronic Arts Inc.)
Some interesting results they cite;

* Average brand familiarity increased by 64 percent
* Average brand rating increased by 37 percent
* Average purchase consideration increased by 41 percent
* Average ad recall increased by 41 percent
* Average ad rating increased by 69 percent

According to the NPD Group 70% of males between 18-34 are gamers and the worldwide market for dynamically served ads is projected to grow to $2.5b in revenues by 2010.
More data that makes this interesting;

Over 70% of all M18-34 are gamers
- NPD Group

Three-quarters of households with a male 8-34 own a videogame system
- Nielsen Entertainment

Videogames account for 15% of teen male’s media intake
- SRI

Who Spend a Lot of Time with Video Games

Men 18-34 spend an average of 41.7 hours playing a game they last purchased
- NPD Group

Young men play 12.5 hours of videogames a week, versus 9.8 hours watching TV
- Nielsen Entertainment

Gamers spend over $700 a year on console games, PC games, and gaming accessories
- IGN Gamer Study

Microsoft isn't the only in this; Intel invested a few million dollars into IGA last year.
Who is doing ingame adverts?- Red Bull, Axe, Reebok, Coca-Cola, Warner Brothers, Movies, Sprite, the U.S. Navy, McDonalds, Fanta, are some examples. Anyone hungry for subway?