Some History of In-Game Advertising

In 1933 the world’s first pinball machine with electricity was released. One year later a scoring-mechanism was embedded into the machines that could track the number of balls and points the user achieved. Now people were competing and had a measure of skill, it wasn’t long before companies began exploiting the game, in the 60s and 70s, companies such as Playboy started branding these games. And so the first iteration of in-game advertising was born.

The next stage of in-game advertising would be the biggest advancement in this ad medium since computer graphics provided more real estate and more engaging environments for advertisers. The first computer graphics powered game was an early version of pong made with military devices. In 1978, the game Adventureland by Scott Adams carried in-game advertising for one of his upcoming games called Pirate Adventure. It’s interesting to unravel Adventureland, as it was a text based game. I conjecture that Adams wanted to create a franchise of games and that the strategy was to gain more face-time to promote his upcoming titles. From herein, companies began working out in-game advertising deals with game publishers prior to the game’s release date. In 1992, the ninja game Zool carried some levels that were branded with Chupa Chups. Zool is the story of a ninja that arrives in earth and must cross through six different lands in order to complete the game. Chupa Chups must have seen a good match with the in-game demographics in order to be one of the first companies to market in-game.

The Zool/Chupa Chups static in-game advertisements were in the form of product placement, with clearly visible lollipops scattered on the side-scrolling game. One year later, in 1993, Electronic Arts (EA) had secured sponsorship from Adidas in-game on the outskirts of the field. It wasn’t long before EA had a roster of clients and partners showing up in most of their sport games.

By examining the history of in-game advertising it is evident that Adventureland realized the value in being able to reach out to its own community and increase their brand loyalty. The other note is that for those multiplayer games where Chupa Chups can be scattered its worthwhile of considering the option of tournament software to create new revenue streams by way of sponsors.