In-game ads going metric

At a press briefing at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City this morning, Activision and Nielsen Entertainment announced their intention to team up and develop a new in-game advertising initiative. The new initiative will let game companies supply advertisers with audience measurement metrics to help them assess the effectiveness of in-game advertising.

"The video game industry is one of the fastest-growing entertainment businesses today, and video games will soon be as mainstream an advertising medium as television. Given the tremendous popularity of the medium, we wanted to take a leadership position in generating a standardized method to measure advertising metrics in video games," said Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision. "Additionally, the need for a metric to measure in-game advertising is particularly great, as we are beginning to see older male gamers 18-34 defect from TV."

Activision and Nielsen Entertainment also released the results of a major survey today. Titled Video Game Habits: A Comprehensive Examination of Gamer Demographics and Behavior in U.S. Television Households, the study of almost 1,000 males aged 8 to 34 is the most comprehensive of its kind to date. Among the study's key findings were that over a quarter of the active male gamers surveyed noticed advertising in the last game they played and that over 50 percent of "heavy" gamers like games to feature real products for added authenticity.

"Our research supports the idea of video game audience measurement," said Michael Dowling, general manager of Nielsen Interactive Entertainment. "The study we conducted with Activision shows that not only are a solid proportion of gamers consciously aware of advertising in the games they play, but they also have positive perceptions of these advertisements in terms of recall, perceived realism of the games, and beneficial impact in deciding which products to buy."