The once promising in-game advertising agency IGA Worldwide continues to struggle, and has laid off nearly a third of its employees, according to a VentureBeat report.

While Microsoft might not appreciate it too much, Reddit users have found a way to block the ads (which many find to be obnoxious) being served up post-Xbox Live dashboard update. People tired of seeing that Chuck Norris World of Warcraft ad (for the record I love that ad!) in the Xbox Live dashboard got together on Reddit and created two work-arounds. One involves blocking the ad server in your router - assuming that it supports it. Another method is to reroute your traffic with the free OpenDNS service.

Ford is sponsoring what it calls the "largest Words with Friends" game ever to promote its all-new Ford Escape. The public gaming event will take place tomorrow at 11:00pm - Wednesday at 12:00am at Hollywood Blvd and Highland Ave or on the company's Facebook page via a livestream.

AXA Equitable, a life insurance company in Farmington, Connecticut, has created a video game to introduce life insurance to women in their 40s. AXA's Pass It On! launched on the web in September and now a mobile application is heading to more portable devices. Pass It On! lets players pick an avatar and walk the streets of New York City collecting gold and avoiding expenses. The character can also buy permanent life insurance (represented in-game as a gold shield worn as a backpack) or term life (a silver shield).

A web ad for EB Games Australia is being called sexist, with one game developer calling it "massive step backward" because it enforces stereotypes about men, women and games. The online ad, "A Man's Guide to Trading" shows a man being nagged by a woman outside of an EB Games store about spending money. After she leaves he goes in and the clerk suggests that instead of spending cash he should trade in some games. He does just that and then uses the money he saved to buy the woman a fancy dinner. The ad ends with the woman dusting while the man plays Arkham City.

According to a new report on worldwide trends in video game advertising from DFC Intelligence, advertisers spent over $1 billion in 2010 using video games as a platform in North America. The activities included in-game advertising, around-game advertising, and advergames. By 2014, DFC Intelligence predicts that advertising in and around video games in North America will double to over $2 billion. On a global basis, advertising in video games will reach $7.2 billion by 2016, up from $3.1 billion in 2010, the group predicts.

New research from the University of Texas notes that players have trouble remembering brands advertised in action games with violent content. According to the new study, ads that appear in violent games actually may have a negative effect on the brand being sold with those playing the violent games they are being advertised in.

Deep Silver's Dead Island trailer has been awarded a Golden Lion in the Internet Film Lion Category at the 58th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The video, which some considered a bit controversial, showed a family holiday interrupted by a sudden and mysterious zombie outbreak, with several family members attacking each other after being infected. The trailer was created by Deep Silver together in cooperation with animation studio Axis Productions.

Concerned about the on-going negotiations between the NFL Players Association and the NFL, one analyst offers his worst-case scenarios on the impact of EA Sports' next Madden Football game.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter is saying that as much as half of Madden's sales could be lost if a lockout cancels the entire NFL season. Keep in mind that that is a worst-case scenario. Pachter is the only analyst willing to offer a prediction on this.

"If the season is only delayed a week or two and fans aren't alienated, there would be only a very small impact," Pachter told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week. "If delayed through Thanksgiving, the impact would be far greater."

While that's an extreme prediction and probably not very likely, Electronic Arts COO John Schappert is not taking any chances. He says that the company has planned on "the most conservative assumption, meaning no season."

Update: Ubisoft has blocked its own video in the United States on YouTube. Watching the video brings up the following copyright notice:

"We Dare - Have a spicy evening !"

This video contains content from Ubisoft, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

Original Story: A promotional video for Ubisoft's decidedly adult Wii Party game, We Dare, will either make you cringe or laugh. Is the video some clever joke marketing or are these people serious? It's hard to tell..

This party game is supposed to be played with your "very attractive friends" and asks you to engage in some questionable behavior using the Wii Remote.

The mini-games will lead to some promiscuous behavior or a fistfight with a friend. To quote that classic comedy song, "Hands off my wife, the party's over."

Game | Life is the latest outlet to talk to psychologist Carole Lieberman about her recent "games cause rape" comments to Fox News. Much like every other outlet that has sought out an explanation for those outlandish comments (or some evidence to back those comments up), Wired instead finds a wall. And let's face it, there's no back pedaling from the fantastic conclusion that Lieberman drew in that Fox News article.

The most interesting comments don't come from Lieberman in Wired's piece - they come from Iowa State University professor Douglas A. Gentile, who soundly squelches her claim that there are "thousands of studies" that draw some sort of correlation between sexual scenes in games and real world sexual assault.

Digital Development Management, a business and talent agency for video games and digital entertainment, has named veteran video game and interactive entertainment executive Paula Cuneo as its new Brand Director. Cuneo has worked for such companies as Microsoft and Activision.

As Brand Director, Cuneo will be responsible for spearheading DDM's brand business by becoming a direct partner to major brands and agencies contracted by DDM to establish product strategy in the video game sector.

Cuneo joins DDM from Massive Inc., the wholly owned in-game advertising subsidiary of Microsoft. While at Massive, she held the title of Director of Business Development and was responsible for managing the company's product placement and business development initiatives. During her tenure, Cuneo helped secure new content and partnerships, building the network to over 70 titles and serving over 300 top tier advertisers.

The Advertising Standards Authority, the government agency in charge of monitoring ads released on television, magazines, and public posters and billboards in the UK, has banned a poster for Sony's Move and the game The Fight: Light's Out. The ad was banned after the agency received eight complaints - two of which strongly objected to one of the men being tackled being "black." The ASA said that the ad features men of "slightly different skin tones" but did not ban the ad based on those complaints..

Instead the ASA banned the ad because it could "condone or encourage violent behavior" in children. Of course, playing in the schoolyard could also encourage the same kind of behavior..

Publishers Clearing House did something bizarre this week and it did not involve a gigantic check. The sweepstake company and magazine seller bought Funtank, an online video game company that is best known for creating advertising-based games (adver-games) for companies such as Trident, Walt Disney, and Toyota.

Financial terms related to the acquisition were not disclosed but we do know that Funtank co-founders James Baker and Scott Tannen will continue to run the company.

While the motives for this purchase are not fully understood, one could guess that Publishers Clearing House is looking for new and exciting ways to engage people on the Internet and get them to buy whatever their marketing partners are pushing to them. Since gaming is second only to social networking according to Nielsen, the deal makes a lot of sense.

Whatever you think of the ad for Call of Duty Black Ops, it sure has captured the attention of the public, and it’s still generating press weeks after its debut. The ad cleverly captures the interactivity of videogames and further dizzies viewers with appearances from Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel.

Aside from the violence being portrayed, the other real sticking point with critics seemed to be the youthful looking girl blasting away with a shotgun, pausing only for an enraptured smile. The female who played shotgun girl? The (aptly named) actress B.K. Cannon, who has also appeared in episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, ER and House M.D.

The Call of Duty: Black Ops ad that has inflamed columnists and moronic sports writers alike is also generating a split reaction from the general public.

Ace Metrix, a company that measures the effectiveness of television advertising, reports that the Black Ops ad scored high with male viewers, but offended older female viewers.

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences named the winners of its annual scholarship programs. Four recipients – Stephen Campbell (Lebanon Valley College), Grant Kao (The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University), Lu-Yu Huang (Carnegie Mellon University) and Justin Nesbit (The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University) -- will receive a total of $10,000 ($2,500 to each recipient) through the Randy Pausch and Mark Beaumont scholarship funds. The scholarships were awarded by the AIAS Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the trade organization.

The Randy Pausch Scholarship was established by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences in 2008 to honor the memory of Computer Science Professor and Co-Founder of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Randy Pausch. The scholarship supports students who pursue careers specializing in the development of interactive entertainment.

While an Atlantic columnist dubbed an advertisement for Call of Duty: Black Ops “twisted,” a fellow scribe at Jezebel defended the ad for prominently featuring female gamers.

Jezebel previously published a column in which the author, unhappy with how games were being marketed to females, offered tips on targeting women gamers. In the new Black Ops-focused piece, Margaret Hartmann wrote that “this ad actually acknowledges that not all of the 5.6 million copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops sold in the first 24 hours were bought by white men ages 18-34.”

The latest ad for Call of Duty: Black Ops, which features "common" people plugged into violent, war-based scenarios, is a little too realistic for one Atlantic columnist.

The ad in question is designed to allude to the interactivity of Black Ops and shows a young girl, a hotel concierge and other various people with normal jobs blasting away at unseen enemies with rocket launchers, shotguns and other weaponry. NBA star Kobe Bryant and late night host Jimmy Kimmel also make an appearance, before a tagline offers “There’s a Soldier in All of Us.”

For the first time, revenue from in-game advertising was broken out in a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB), and the figures were not all that overwhelming.

The Canadian Online Advertising Revenue Survey (PDF) serves up actual 2009 results in addition to 2010 estimates. The report stated that 2009 revenue from Canadian in-game advertising was $3 million, or less than one percent of the year’s total of $1.82 billion.

Videogame advertising, as defined by IAB, “can range from an Advertiser buying some or all of the ad units in or around a game, to a 'Sponsored by' link to a custom-branded Game experience.”

Speaking to The Star, IAB President Paula Gignac called videogames “something of a walled garden” when it comes to marketing information.

An analysis of restaurant, beverage and food websites advertised on the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon between August 2006 and March 2007 led researchers to recommend that food companies come up with—and adhere to—uniform guidelines for marketing their products to children.

UC Davis researchers Diana Cassady and Jennifer Culp scrutinized 19 websites, 290 webpages and 247 advergames, according to a story on Science Daily. 84 percent of the websites featured online games, which were described as a “strategy to encourage ongoing and return website visits. Every single advergame also contained at least one brand identifier.

A series of television ads run in the UK for the PlayStation 3 game Heavy Rain rankled a few feathers due to their timing and violence.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) reported receiving 38 complaints in response to four Heavy Rain ads, with viewers criticizing the violence of the ads and a perceived glamorization of violence. The objectors also worried that the ads were run at a time of day when children could view them.

The last complaint about the ads was that they were run around the same time that a shop keeper in Huddersfield was killed in an armed robbery. The Heavy Rain ads all depicted a scene in which a shop keeper was repeatedly threatened by an armed man with Heavy Rain character Scott Shelby watching. The versions differed in how the Shelby reacted to the situation; he either intervened, attacked or negotiated with the armed robber.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an online game designed to educate eight to twelve year olds on the ins and outs of advertising.

Admongo.gov is free to play and offers four levels, which each serve up a special lesson for kids: The Atrium has users identify ads around them, the Assemblimator shows kids how to dissect an ad and evaluate its claims, the Planadtarium revolves around ad targeting while the Adgitator allows them to build and target their own ads.

“Today’s kids see advertising everywhere – in movies and TV shows, outdoors, on phones, in games,” said David C. Vladeck, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.  “That’s why it’s important to teach them how to apply critical thinking skills to the ads they see.

The Admongo site also offers up a curriculum, developed with Scholastic, Inc., that teachers can use with 5th and 6th grade students.

In a bid to drum up metrics on gamers that are comparable to those kept on users of other more traditional media, Nielson Games recently conducted a study of Xbox 360 owners that play the game 1 vs 100.

Working with Microsoft for the pilot study, the company placed watermarks in Season 2 of the game, which allowed the researcher to retrieve specific audience data over a 13 week period from November 2009 through February 2010. The study utilized two versions of 1 vs 100; the live form of the game and an Extended Play version that allows players to brush up on the game.

As part of a campaign designed to boost recruitment, the French Army introduced a new campaign that uses the slogan “Devenez vous-même” or “Be Yourself,” and directs interested parties to visit the website DevenezVousMeme.com.

The French Army ad appears to have caught the eye of Electronic Arts, as an article on LusoGamer (translated) points out that an ad for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 appears to have somewhat appropriated the French Army slogan. The similarities were not very difficult to notice as the giant ads appeared right next to each other (picture) in a French subway station. EA’s ad directed users towards the (inactive) website DevenezPlusQueVous-meme.com, which translates to “Be More Than Yourself.”

Army General Philippe Pontiès didn’t find much humor in the matter, telling French website Ecrans (translated) that:

We are clearly in a situation of abuse of slogan. So far, our campaign is working very well, we have very good returns.

The General also noted that the army has been advertising in videogames, with good results, and, ironically enough, has advertised in select EA game, such as NHL 10, NBA Live 10 and Need For Speed Pro Street. The General made it clear that the Army advertises only in racing or sports games, never army or military-themed games.

The ad appropriation issue has apparently been resolved through dialog between the Army’s agency and Electronic Arts.


Thanks Emanuel!

In a move to make the roads of Canada safer, Advertising Standards Canada has handed down a ruling that ads cannot depict cars exceeding the speed limit, car chases in a residential setting or other unsafe driving practices.

A story in Canada's Globe and Mail details the ruling and clarifications to existing guidelines It also gets comments from various car manufacturers about their ad policies and how the new rules may affect them.

But where it gets interesting is a paragraph later in the story:

And some of the worst offenders are not even in the car business. An ad for the new Forza Motorsports 3 video game – which is rated E, suggesting it is acceptable for all ages – features cars swerving out of control, rolling over, and smashing into each other. Some car industry executives point to Hollywood movies and even tire manufacturers as airing unsafe depictions.

In looking closer at the ruling on the ASC site, the clarification seems directed at motor vehicle advertising and not at virtual world racing or games. We have contacted ASC to see if video game publishers would be prohibited from advertising any type of unsafe driving in their games, which could eliminate advertising for many rally or racing games. We'll post an update if and when we get an answer.

Update: Janet Feasby, vice president of standards for the ASC, repsonded back to our inquiry about video game ads, and as suspected the guidelines were designed for ads showing the depiction of driving cars and other motorized vehicles and not to the depiction of driving in products such as a video game.

However, she did offer a clarification:

Clause 10 (Safety) of the Code applies to the advertising of any category of product. It states that: “advertisements must not without reason, justifiable on educational or social grounds, display a disregard for safety by depicting situations that might reasonably be interpreted as encouraging unsafe or dangerous practices, or acts.

 

If ASC received a complaint from a consumer alleging that driving or racing scenes in a commercial for a video game could encourage unsafe behaviour, ASC would review the commercial against Clause 10. And, as directed by Interpretation Guideline #1, “in assessing the impression likely to be conveyed by an advertisement, ASC will take into consideration the use and application in the advertisement of the elements of humour and fantasy.”

Advertising Age has an interesting video interview about the value and effectiveness of in-game advertising in video games.

The interview picks the brain of Kevin Slavin, managing director of Area/Code, a New York company that, according to its web site, creates games designed to "highlight the connections between these imaginary spaces and the world around them."

Slavin talks about in-game ads and how ad agencies don't understand how communicating with gamers through these ads is such a different process than in normal advertising.

The interview is part two with Slavin. Part one dealt with "the changing business of mobile social games."

The Federal Trade Commission passed down a ruling today that could have some impact on the way video game reviews sites and bloggers do business.

The FTC, in a 4-0 ruling, said that "material connections" between advertisers and endorsers (such as payments or free products) "must be disclosed."

The hook seems to be the phrasing that "connections that consumers would not expect." Hardcore video game readers tend to be a jaded lot, and think that many sites are on the take for good reviews any way, whether they are or not. Most understand that sites get free games to review. But the general consumer may not know this.

The ruling also broadened the existing guidelines to cover bloggers:

[The new rules] address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

The FTC did not rule that bloggers or companies must disclose any conflicts of interest.

There has always been a blurred line when sites accept advertising from game publishers and then review their products. Those same sites get free games and swag as part of review packages from publishers. Some sites do disclose this information, but most don't.

GamePolitics has contacted the FTC to see if these new rules extend to the video game arena. We'll update with a response when we get it.

New research indicates that in-game advertisement which feature violent elements may be more memorable to players than nonviolent ads.

MIT's Technology Review reports on the study conducted in part at the University of Luxemburg

[Researchers] developed a simple racing game called AdRacer... A player drives around a virtual course and scores points by hitting targets along the way--as she drives, unobtrusive graphical ads are displayed as billboard graphics... while a camera records her eye movements. After playing, each player's ability to recall of brands shown on the side of the road was tested.

 

Those who played a violent version of the game, where the goal was to run down pedestrians, resulting in a blood-splattered screen, demonstrated significantly better recall of advertised brands than those who played the regular version...

Of course, while violent ads may increase the player's memory of the product, they could also be a public relations disaster in the making. Technology Review notes that University of Luxemburg researchers have also found that ad violence can lessen a gamer's opinion of a brand.

GP: The screenshot at left is from the University of Luxemburg's AdRacer.

The sorry history of homophobia in gaming is pretty well documented, so it's probably not a coincidence that a campaign to discourage anti-gay remarks includes a gaming piece among its poster ads.

ThinkB4YouSPeak, which hopes to raise awareness about anti-gay bias in America's schools by reducing the use of homophobic language, explains its mission at its website:

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens experience homophobic remarks and harassment throughout the school day, creating an atmosphere where they feel disrespected, unwanted and unsafe. Homophobic remarks such as “that’s so gay” are the most commonly heard; these slurs are often unintentional and a common part of teens’ vernacular. Most do not recognize the consequences, but the casual use of this language often carries over into more overt harassment.

The poster at left substitutes the commonly heard "That's so gay" with "That's so gamer guy who has more video games than friends." Stereotypical? Of course. But that would seem to be the point. Other posters include jock and cheerleader themes.