Title: Effectiveness of in-game advertisements within role-playing games

Authors: Luis Guerra; Deepak Saxena

Addresses: Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland ' Department of Management, BITS Pilani, Pilani, India

Abstract: The digital gaming industry has grown tremendously in the past decade. The vast potential of the gaming market combined with consumers' defiance for traditional advertising calls for research focusing on finding the most effective ways to implement advertisements within digital games. Although research has studied factors such as advertisement format, gaming experience, demographics, brand familiarity and advertising attitude in racing game, limited research has been performed in the genre of role-playing games (RPG), which accounts with a vast player base. This study investigates the influence of two key factors - prominence and congruity - on brand awareness and brand attitudes in the RPG context. Using brand placement in a self-developed game, this study finds that passive and incongruent advertisements are associated with high brand recognition and brand recall in the RPG genre.

Keywords: in-game advertising; prominence; congruity; brand recall; brand recognition.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEMR.2022.123940

International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 2022 Vol.13 No.3, pp.280 - 299

Received: 09 Sep 2020
Accepted: 16 Jan 2021
Published online: 05 Jul 2022 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article