Coke, Pepsi, Nike, and Adidas Top In-Game Advertising Survey

Officials from marketing services firm Phoenix Marketing International have released details of the company’s inaugural study into in-game advertising and product placement in video games. The study found that Coke, Pepsi, Nike and Adidas were the top brands which active adult gamers recalled seeing while playing games with advertising. The firm’s study found that 54 percent of gamers who had played sports games such as Madden NFL 07 are the most likely to have recalled some form of advertising while playing the game. Four out of five of the top games where advertising was recalled were sports games, namely 2006 FIFA World Cup, NHL 2K7, Madden NFL 07 and NBA 2K7. Racing games were the next most popular genre of game for in-game advertising recall. The study examined advertising recall in seventy of the top video games available for current generation systems. However, David Pluchino, senior research manager at Phoenix Marketing International warned that the term “advertising” should be taken loosely, since gamers were not asked about what advertising they saw while playing specific games, but rather if they recalled seeing any real products within the game. If so, they were asked what they remembered seeing. Some of the more popular types of products and brands recalled were Nike, Adidas and Reebok for apparel and footwear, Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew and Gatorade for beverages, Ford and BMW for cars, Samsung for electronics, McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King for fast food and Axe for personal care. The report is planned as the first wave of the company's Video GAMERS (Game Advertising & Measurement Evaluation Research Syndication) studies and was comprised of a total of 1,502 online interviews completed between October 5th and October 11th, 2006. The interviews were equally split between male and female gamers, eighteen years of age or older. The study was conducted among “active” gamers, i.e. those that had played and either purchased or rented a game on any current system in the past thirty days.