In-Game Advertising: Brand Integration and Player Involvement as Key Influencing Factors on Brand Recall

In-game advertising is proving itself as an important marketing tool because it promises a strong advertising impact when considering essential influencing factors. This study focuses on involvement and brand integration as influencing factors on brand recall. Regarding involvement, we aim to examine if players will remember significantly more brands than observers based on the former's higher levels of emotional involvement. Additionally, we examine if a more pronounced sports affinity, as an expression of personal involvement, positively affects brand recall. We aim to determine if significant differences between brand recall for prominent and peripheral advertisements can be observed regarding the degree of brand integration. Within this study, 56 players and 58 observers first played or watched someone play a racing game and were consequently polled regarding their ability to recall the brands advertised within the game. Our findings show that advertisers should not exclusively rely on in-game advertisements for their products. This is because this type of advertisement cannot match the advertising effect that more conventional formats on traditional media can offer and hence is unfit to replace them entirely. Moreover, advertisers are encouraged to investigate personal involvement further, as an important influencing factor for advertising impact. The improved brand recall we observed for participants with a high value for sports affinity indicates a positive correlation between stronger personal involvement and a more substantial advertising impact. Additionally, advertisers aiming to market high-involvement products should focus on prominent advertisement displays by establishing as many interactive player contacts as possible to achieve better brand recall.