A Content Analysis of Advertising in Popular Video Games

There have been a plethora of analyses on the effects of and brand image of advertising in video games, but a dearth of analyses simply examining the role advertising has played in video games over the years. This study seeks to add to the available research on this topic. This study has yielded a great amount of information which should have pre-dated any analysis of the effects of advertising in video games, or brand placement and recall, and certainly any analysis on purchase intent as a result of interacting or observing brand or product placement in video games. Not only do the results of this analysis have a great deal of potential real world implications, but should help advance the literature on the subject. It was shown that the amount of advertising in video games has significantly increased over the past thirteen years. Sports games are the most likely to include advertising, and shooters are the least likely, but until a more concise classification system is established, we can only use the current one to the best of its ability. This study also illustrated that in-game advertisements were significantly higher for real products than fictitious products