The Internet Advertising Bureau have announced plans to form a Game Advertising Council and release a list of In-Game Advertising Measurement Guidelines that are available for public comment here (.pdf).

These guidelines will make it easier for companies to buy and sell in-game advertising through standardisation that will help define the value of in-game advertising space.

Now, I think that in-game advertising is an inevitable part of gaming in the future. Already we see adverts popping up now and then. I have yet to see an in-game advert that isn’t horrendously jarring and fourth wall-shattering. I’m not even saying that adverts don’t have a place in videogames. Clearly they do. Look at GTA4‘s plethora of humorous parody adverts! They go to show that advertisements can lend to the realism of a virtual space. But, it largely depends on the nature of the advert itself.

If you’re playing a World War 2 shooter and you see a rusty billboard advertising Transformers 2 on Blu-ray your immersive experience will be ruined (a retro CocaCola or Cadbury advert would look grand though). On the other hand, if you’re playing a game set in a capitalist future you may well expect to see some modern real-life logos such as Pepsi, Coke, Dell, or Skynet (Like in that Minority Report movie).

I’ve given the guidelines a quick skim and of course it doesn’t cover keeping adverts relevant to a game’s setting. It covers things such as exposure (less than 1.5% of average screen space) and datamining.

As I say, in-game advertising is inevitable. I know if I were an advertiser I sure as shit would be looking into it. Hundreds of thousands of consumer eyes see this virtual space and they are going unaffected by ads in their peripheral vision.

I would complain more but I have a sudden urge to drive to the shop in my Lexus wearing my GAP t-shirt to buy some Pepsi and a Nokia.

Via: EDGE