Are Banner Advertisements in Online Games Effective?

Abstract

Advertising in online games has grown considerably in recent years and is expected to see continued expansion (Cauberghe and DePelsmacker 2010). However, the literature suggests that banner advertisements in games are sometimes ineffective, often being seen as annoying and potentially triggering avoidance behavior. Because of the possibility of avoidance it is important to examine whether gamers have implicit memory of banner ads even if they don't explicitly recall them. The experiment conducted here measures both explicit and implicit memory of a banner ad in an advergame to assess whether and how well the game players exposed to the ad remembered it. Results suggest that a high proportion of the gamers exposed to the ads did have explicit and implicit memory of the messages shown. Moreover, gamers who were high achievers reported a higher level of implicit memory than those who were less effective at playing games, suggesting that these ads can be remembered despite a high level of concentration on the game. These findings are consistent with the notion that banner ads have a stronger chance of being effective in advergames than in some other contexts, especially among avid gamers.