Game Advertising: A Conceptual Framework and Exploration of Advertising Prevalence

Although academic business-based research into the area of Video and Computer Games (games) has increased in recent years, it will be shown that these have had a propensity to concentrate upon either Advergames or In-Game Advertising. However, this does not present the full picture of the association of games with advertising, and as such, a conceptual framework is offered, which is more inclusive of other aspects of marketing concepts used. Furthermore, our results into game advertising prevalence within the top 200 games within each year from 2005 through 2009 show that nearly 38% of these had advertising and marketing associations and that over 30% were through Around-Game Advertising associations.