Study backs in-game ad effectiveness

A study by The Nielsen Company – which was commissioned by EA – claims that a recent Gatorade promotion run in conjunction with EA Sports saw an average increase in household spend on the product of 24 per cent.

The report isolated households that had purchased either NHL 09/10, NBA Live 07/08/09 or NBA Street Homecourt, all of which included a number of Gatorade product placements within the game.

The conclusion was drawn by comparing total spend on the Gatorade brand between homes that did not buy any of the games and those who did both before and after Gatorade branding was integrated into the game.

Video games are a deeply engaging consumer experience,” director of media product leadership for The Nielsen Company Gerardo Guzman stated.

Bringing our industry accepted ad effectiveness understanding to video games is another way to help marketers understand how consumers respond to advertising across different environments. This should help optimise the impact of and derive a return on media investments. In this case the story is simple – dollars put into video game product placement result in more retail dollars.”