Corporates get high on in-game ad

More and more corporates are moving towards advertising their products through popular video games as 'in-game advertising' catches up as a newer and cheaper but effective medium to reach out to the target audiences. The worlwide in-game advertising market is estimated to hit $2 billion mark by 2010.

Though in-game advertising is in a nascent stage here, Indian game developers, besides catering to domestic companies are readying to bite into the big global pie.

Companies prefer in-game advertising as opposed to 'advergaming' featuring companies' products as this is more subtle "Companies are now realising the value that in-game advertising is bringing. It is slowly but surely becoming an alternate form of advertising" says Salil Bhargava, of Paradox, a gaming company.

"A lot of brands have been showing interest in in-game

advertising as it offers a targeted opportunity in terms of reaching out to a particular kind of target audience i.e. young, upwardly mobile, tech savy, independent and with a relatively high consumption ability," says Suhail Baghdadi of IndiaGames, a leading gaming content provider.

NASSCOM estimates the market for gaming development in India to reach $300 million by 2009 from the current $80 million.

"Recently we had a prominent oil company approach us to be present in a car racing game we were creating for the Formulae 1/ Grand Prix" says Rajiv Hiranandani of mobile2win, a mobile content provider.

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