Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Obama Advertises in a Video Game


Campaign ads for presidential candidate Sen. Barak Obama are appearing in the the video game Burnout Paradise.

Roadside billboard advertising in the real world is nothing new. Images stay with us as we cruise down the ashphalt highway. I think the impact is even greater in a video game because players are more engaged with what they are seeing on screen.

Obviously there are people at the Obama campaign are really thinking about how to engage with younger voters.

In game ad revenue also is a smart move by game publishers. GigaOm confirmed with Electronic Arts that the Obama campaign purchased the spots through them.

As a parent who recently purchased a Wii for my son, I wonder though how I would feel about ads for McDonalds or other companies appearing while my son is playing Wii Tennis? Kids are marketed to too much already, and there need to be some areas that are just ad free.

Perhaps in the future we'll be seeing games being sold in ad-supported and ad-free versions. The latter costing a little bit more of course.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Looks like Obama is gunning hard for the youth vote. I wonder if they'll actually turn out to vote?