The Effectiveness of "in-Game" Advertising: Comparing College Students' Explicit and Implicit Memory for Brand Names

ABSTRACT: In-game advertising has become a major advertising outlet. The current study examined the effect of brand names placed in video games on college students ’ memory. Both implicit and explicit memory for brands placed in two sports computer games were tested using a word-fragment test and a recognition task, respectively. The results indicated that college students had low levels of explicit memory (recognition test) for the brands, but they showed implicit memory (word-fragment test) for the brand names placed in the video games. The expansion of the video and computer game industry has made advertisers aware of the potential of video and computer games as an advertising vehicle (Kelly 2003). The placement of brands in games is called “in-game advertising. ” It is reported that one game company alone—Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) —recorded 9 billion in annual sales, which is almost the equivalent of yearly box-office revenues for the movie industry in the United States (Young 2004). In addition to the sales of the games, the increasing numbers of game users make video and computer games an attractive format for