i’m carrying this Idea for a few year’s now and i thought this might be the place to get rid of it.
I’d like to show and sell banner/Video space in my game. But those banners wouldn’t be a fixed portion of the screen, they’ll be shown on in-world billboard’s or on the borders of an sports game. Maybe you remember how Wipe Out had ‘real’ Red Bull banners in the game above the tracks. Videos for example could run on any in game screen like a TV in a Bar or run before that important news that drives the story. I’d like to do that with an Ad-Network backed.
Obviously this wont work with classical banner ad’s because they wouldn’t be clickable. It will be more like product placement and the ad’s wont disrupt the immersion like an web-banner-ad does ( it literally kicks you out of game if you click one, think about what that will do to an oculus rift game in the future). Imho as a gamer, in the game world integrated ads are far more acceptable than annoying banners that stand aside and cost valuable screen space.
They will be a natural part of the game world, just like the real world.
I’d like to put this up for discussion, how this could be done, how it would be attractive for advertisers or where the measurable values are when it comes to range or revenue.
This is an awesome idea. I personally would love to see Unity Ads adopt this sort of advertising into it’s feature set. A number of devs have asked about it. I’d vote for this.
That looks like what FIFA & WinningEleven series have been doing.
Of course it’s great to have another option of Ads placement and more fluent player experience, but as you cannot select the Ads content, it might sometimes break the integrity of the game’s art style. E.g.: Imagine a huge CocaCola banner in the world of Limbo.
Well since we’re on about ideals and I have not the resources to implement them, a few years back I suggested that Twitter as an advertising medium would be ideally suited to do these things via twitter feeds directly into games for their advertising clientele.
An advertiser can send a twitter stream to a % off coupon for their product. The the player must earn the coupon. The more game points the player earns the more % off.
An advertiser can send a twitter stream containing a game model, or MP3 of a famous musician as another example and the user can unlock the link to download using Unity assetbundles by accomplishing goals in the game. Unfortunately for me, assetbundles require Unity Pro + Unity Pro iOS + Unity Pro Android which I can’t afford.
As you can see from 1) & 2) the variants of combining advertising ‘twitter style’ text messages, earnable assetbundles, and coupons can create quite rewarding and original gameplay.
Of course businesses can simply give away assetbundles and percent off coupons as being desirable advertising.
As the 1st business I could target whose advertising is extremely expensive and whose business model is ideally suited for such a advertising mechanism consider the American Automobile industry.
Using the ideal given here Unity Ads and the automobile industry could make available to customers new car models as asset bundles available for gamers to download as the new models each year as they become available. This can be in car racing games or navigation apps or automobile gas mileage and maintenance apps. I simply don’t have the clout Unity has to talk with the auto industry big wigs but you can see it would be very worth while for the automobile industry to pay Unity good effective advertising money to develop this style advertising capability and Unity Ads can then vet whether original apps wishing to possibly use, e.g. Ford advertising via new car models in assetbundles, meet the ESRB requirements and genre requirements for Ford Motor Company.
Well although I wrote twitter about my ideal they didn’t respond with interest or at all except to send my a link that led to a page to fill out of an internship at twitter. Maybe you Unity ads workers will see the value of what I propose here. I’d like to try to found such a company but I’m not going to kid myself, I don’t have the resources.
The game maker, as well as Unity in return for this valuable service earn a bit of money for making this interesting way of advertising available to customers.
If Unity ads does implement such an ideal as above, you have got to make assetbundles free so I can develop games using this ideal. That and it’s sensible business to allow this form of advertising in Unity Free as well.
Thanks for reading. Sometimes it’s as exciting sharing an ideal as actually implementing an ideal, which can be somewhat of a drudgery.
+1, product placement/plugging has been an established form of advertising in TV and movies for ages. As anyone in marketing will tell you it’s “all about eyeballs” and this would definitely be an attractive option. Furthering OP’s suggestion, real-world product ads on in-game TV screens or billboards or having replicated products would be a great idea not only for exposure but also because for some it may be seen less as “check out that plug” and more of “wow, ____ let them use the real logo and everything!” Of course… it would have to be subtle and fit the context. If it came across as a blatant marketing strategy or the brand name/logo was in your face all the time it would have the opposite effect. For example, if every time you completed an objective it was like “great! let’s head back to the _________ to resupply! and maybe grab a ______ from the _____! (lower and quicker voice) only at _____”.
