What In-Game Advertising Buys
Studies of brands inside video games measure memory, liking and choice, and they do not agree, because each counts a different outcome. The evidence on recall, attitude and persuasion, laid out without forcing a single verdict.
Answer to the question
Does in-game advertising work?
It depends on what is measured. Students recognised few brands placed in two sports games but showed implicit memory for them, brands gained in attitude only when met during positive play, and advergames appeared persuasive even though brand information was less likely to be remembered.
Key takeaways
- Moonhee Yang and colleagues found in 2006 that students had low recognition of brands placed in two sports games but showed implicit memory for the brand names.
- Moritz Ingendahl and colleagues reported in 2023 that brand placements in games have a small and inconsistent overall effect on attitudes, and in their two experiments only brands met during positive play gained.
- Zeph van Berlo and colleagues pooled 38 data sets in 2021 and found advergames appeared persuasive and appeared to drive choice, although brand information was less likely to be remembered.
- The same 2021 meta-analysis found advergames were less likely than other advertising to be recognised as advertising.
A brand name on a virtual stadium wall is the same object in every study of in-game advertising. What changes from study to study is the question the researchers put to it. They can ask what the player remembers, how the player feels about the brand, or what the player picks when offered a choice, and the wall is the same in all three while the verdict is not.
Each question is a frame, and each frame has a blind spot. A memory test misses anything the player cannot report. An attitude test misses a brand that was remembered and ignored. A choice test depends on what was offered and when. The evidence is easiest to read one frame at a time.
What players remember of a brand they cannot recall seeing
In 2006 Moonhee Yang and three colleagues put brand names inside two sports computer games and tested college students in two ways. A recognition test asks people to pick out the brands they saw, and it measures explicit memory. A word-fragment test gives people partial words to complete and records whether brand names come out, and it measures implicit memory.
The students did badly on recognition, which is the measure most people mean by remembering an ad. The fragment test showed memory for the brand names. The students had little conscious record of the brands and some trace of them anyway.
Games differ from television in one respect that may matter: the player is acting, not watching, so attention is split between the brand and the task. Yang's participants were college students and the games date from 2006, so neither is today's player.
That pattern is the one the mere exposure effect would lead a researcher to look for, familiarity building without the viewer knowing it, though The Mere Exposure Effect Has a Ceiling shows where repetition stops paying. The study measured memory, not liking, so it does not show the effect at work.
A third report is weaker and worth stating as such. In Buyology, Martin Lindstrom summarises a study by the neuromarketing firm Neuroco in one sentence: none of the in-game billboards got any attention. The book gives no source for it that the vault's audit could trace to a paper, and a search did not turn up a published version.
When a logo changes how players feel about a brand
Remembering a brand and liking it are separate outcomes, and the overall effect of brand placements in games on attitudes is small and inconsistent across studies. Moritz Ingendahl, Michaela Wänke and two colleagues asked in 2023 when a placement helps.
In two experiments set in one 3D first-person game, which were read here only at the level of the abstract, only brands encountered during positive in-game experiences gained from the placement. Brands met during negative experiences did not. The mechanism they tested is evaluative conditioning: a brand paired with a good or bad feeling picks up some of it. Attitudes tracked how well players remembered which brand had gone with which experience, and the memory was stronger when the pairing mattered to the game's storyline.
So the same logo on the same wall can help a brand or do nothing, depending on what the player was going through as it passed. Television placement has a different sorting rule. Cristel Russell's sitcom study, set out in When Product Placement Actually Works, found that fit with the scene decided whether a placement persuaded. Brands woven into the plot were recognised by about 55 per cent of viewers against about 6 per cent for incidental visual placements, and the incidental ones did more for attitudes. Memory and liking pulled apart there too.
In the game experiments, the player's own experience did the sorting.
How an advergame differs from a billboard in a game
The closest neighbour in the literature is not in-game advertising. It is the advergame, a game built around a brand. In 2021 Zeph van Berlo, Eva van Reijmersdal and Martin Eisend pooled 38 data sets in a meta-analysis across five outcomes: attitude to the ad, memory, persuasion, choice behaviour and persuasion knowledge.
Players liked advergames more than other advertising. Brand and product information was less likely to be remembered when it arrived through a game. Advergames still appeared persuasive and appeared to drive choice, and they were less likely than other advertising to be recognised as advertising. Younger consumers seemed more susceptible to the persuasive effect than older ones.
Put beside Yang's result on in-game advertising, it points the same way: weak conscious memory, and persuasion present anyway. Persuasion knowledge, the working understanding people have of how persuasion operates, would predict a discount once a pitch is recognised, and it has little to work on when the pitch is not recognised as one.
Recognition can be forced. A 2020 meta-analysis of 61 papers on sponsored content by Martin Eisend and colleagues found that disclosing a sponsorship raised recognition of it and lowered attitudes to the brand. Making an advertisement look like one has a price, which advergames were less likely to pay.
An advergame is a different object from a billboard in someone else's game. It shows what play does to persuasion in general, not what a stadium wall does.
Why the studies disagree about what in-game advertising buys
| What was counted | Study | What it found |
|---|---|---|
| Explicit memory | Yang and colleagues, 2006 | Low recognition of brands in two sports games |
| Implicit memory | Yang and colleagues, 2006 | Brand names came out of word fragments |
| Attitude | Ingendahl and colleagues, 2023 | Gains only for brands met during positive play |
| Persuasion and choice | van Berlo and colleagues, 2021 | Present for advergames, with weaker memory |
The four rows do not add up to a yes or a no, and averaging them would hide the finding, which is that each counts something different. A brand can fail a recognition test and still leave a trace. A trace can fail to become liking when the player was losing. Liking can arrive through a game built around the brand while the player remembers little of what it said.
No study read here follows a brand name from a word fragment to a shelf, so whether the trace ever changes a choice is still open. Which row counts depends on the claim being made. A sponsor selling awareness will point to the trace in the memory results, a sponsor selling goodwill needs the attitude result, and a sponsor selling units needs the choice result. None of the three supports the other two, so a verdict on in-game advertising needs the outcome named, and since a placement that fails one test is not necessarily failing the others, a figure for the effectiveness of in-game advertising should prompt the question of which outcome it counts.
Common questions
Does in-game advertising work?
It depends on what is measured. In Moonhee Yang's 2006 study, students recognised few of the brands placed in two sports games but showed implicit memory for them. In Moritz Ingendahl's 2023 experiments, brands gained only when they appeared during positive in-game experiences.
Do players remember the brands they see in games?
Not consciously, by the evidence read here. Yang and colleagues found low recognition, though the word-fragment test showed some memory for the brand names. Recognition asks the player to say what they saw, and the fragment test asks nothing of the kind, which is why the two can disagree.
What is the difference between an advergame and in-game advertising?
An advergame is a game built around a brand. In-game advertising places a brand inside a game made for other reasons. The 2021 meta-analysis by Zeph van Berlo and colleagues covers advergames, so its findings on persuasion and choice should not be read as findings about billboards in other people's games.
Why do studies of in-game advertising disagree?
They count different outcomes, and each outcome has its own blind spot. One measures what players can recall, another what they feel about the brand, another what they choose, and a brand can pass one test and fail the next. The studies also use different games, different players and, in the case of advergames, a different kind of advertising altogether.
Sources
Yang, M., Roskos-Ewoldsen, D. R., Dinu, L., & Arpan, L. M. (2006). 'The effectiveness of "in-game" advertising: comparing college students' explicit and implicit memory for brand names.' Journal of Advertising, 35(4), 143-152. doi:10.2753/JOA0091-3367350410
Eisend, M., van Reijmersdal, E. A., Boerman, S. C., & Tarrahi, F. (2020). 'A meta-analysis of the effects of disclosing sponsored content.' Journal of Advertising, 49(3), 344-366. doi:10.1080/00913367.2020.1765909
van Berlo, Z. M. C., van Reijmersdal, E. A., & Eisend, M. (2021). 'The gamification of branded content: a meta-analysis of advergame effects.' Journal of Advertising, 50(2), 179-196. doi:10.1080/00913367.2020.1858462
Ingendahl, M., Vogel, T., Maedche, A., & Wänke, M. (2023). 'Brand placements in video games: how local in-game experiences influence brand attitudes.' Psychology & Marketing, 40(2), 274-287. doi:10.1002/mar.21770
Lindstrom, M. (2008). Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy. Doubleday, with a reliability audit. The Neuroco in-game billboard sentence carries no citation that could be traced to a paper.