Gaming branding: promotion through video games

Formats: from banner to narrative integration

In-game advertising is divided into several types, and confusing them is a common mistake among those who enter the channel for the first time.

• Static advertising — billboards, signs, textures within the game world. Does not change in real time, cheaper to produce, suitable for recognition.
• Dynamic advertising — updated via ad-servers, creative can be changed without patching the game. Good for performance tasks and A/B testing.
• Product placement — the brand is embedded as a physical object: an energy drink can in a character's hand, a car of a specific brand. Works on association, not on click.
• Sponsored content — branded quests, skins, events. Requires the largest investment, but provides the longest interaction.
• Branded locations — entire spaces in metaverses (Roblox, Fortnite), where players enter voluntarily.

The choice of format depends on the goal. If the task is reach and brand recognition, static and dynamic ads with CPM 10–20 dollars per media format and 15–30 for video solve the issue quickly. If the goal is deep emotional connection and contact time, sponsored mechanics and locations are needed: interactive ads cost 10–30 dollars CPM, but are paid back through engagement — average interaction time with branded content varies from 5 to 9 minutes; for example, the CeraVe campaign showed an average time of 6,3 minutes. For comparison — a banner in a social media feed gets fractions of a second of attention.

Why native advertising works better than direct advertising

The answer is not that native integration is 'less intrusive' — that is a superficial explanation. The real mechanism is more complex: in the psychology of advertising perception, there is an effect of contextual emotional transfer. A brand encountered by a player in a positive gaming situation (victory, level completion, reward) receives a transfer of positive emotion to the brand itself. And vice versa — placement during a failure or stress moment worsens perception.

Here lies a counterintuitive fact that is rarely examined: unfamiliar brands receive a greater positive effect from gaming integrations than well-known ones. A well-known brand already has a formed image, and gaming contact hardly changes the attitude. For a new brand, associative memory is empty, and the positive gaming context forms perception from scratch — the effectiveness of such 'first encounter' is higher than that of image advertising for a well-established market player.

The second point is that the centrality of placement is more important than its size. A small, but noticeable object in the center of action works better than a huge billboard on the periphery of the map. Frequency of impressions is also secondary: in the Atomic Heart and Pyaterochka case in Minecraft, with 6,6 million banner impressions and 3,3 million unique users, the average contact frequency was only 2,0, and that was enough for a 30% sales growth and 100 million content views. It's not about the number of repetitions, but about the quality of context.

Case: how Atomic Heart and Pyaterochka made the right bet

This is a telling example of a systemic approach. The game Atomic Heart is Russian, with a strong aesthetic of an alternative Soviet future, while Pyaterochka is a mass retailer with a recognizable brand offline, but without experience in the gaming environment. Instead of a direct product placement, the team chose a combination: branded locations in Minecraft (building virtual stores) plus a content campaign around the aesthetic of the game itself.

The result is not a coincidence, but a consequence of three decisions. First, we chose to collaborate with a game that has a highly loyal audience and a matching aesthetic in spirit, rather than the most popular game overall. Second, we integrated the campaign as part of the game world, rather than as a promotional insert on top of it. Third, we gave users the opportunity to interact (enter, explore), rather than simply observe. The outcome: a 30% increase in sales, 6,6 million banner impressions, 3,3 million unique users. The contact frequency indicator of 2,0 proves the main thesis from the section above — the depth of contact is more important than its repetitiveness.

Another example of high standards — NIKELAND in Roblox

NIKELAND attracted 6,7 million visitors in the first five months from 224 countries. This is not in-game advertising, but a branded universe of its own, where the audience voluntarily entered and spent time in branded activities. Such a format is expensive and not suitable for everyone — but it demonstrates the upper limit of what is available to a brand with serious investments in game presence.

How to choose a game and calculate ROI

Error #1 in game selection — relying solely on audience size. A game with 50 million users, but with an irrelevant demographic and foreign brand context, will deliver worse results than a niche project with a precise audience and tone match. Selection criteria:

1. Alignment of the game's demographics with the brand's target audience (age, geography, purchasing power).
2. Alignment of the game's aesthetics and mood with the brand's positioning — tonal conflict undermines the effect of transferring emotions.
3. Presence of engagement mechanics (is it possible to do more than just show, but to enable interaction).
4. Technical capabilities of the platform for embedding measurable tags (pixels, ad-servers, partner SDKs).

According to effectiveness measurements, the situation is better than commonly believed in review articles. Kantar reports: 71% of users make a purchase on the day of contact with mobile game advertising, and an additional 38% make additional purchases within the following three months. This means that the 'click' metric is not the main one at all — one needs to look at offline and online conversion with a minimum attribution window of a quarter. Additionally, 45% of mobile game users make in-game purchases with an average order value of 650 rubles — this is a signal that the audience is willing to pay and accustomed to spending within the game context, which facilitates the integration of branded offers.

Different brand categories — different strategies

Materials in the top of the search results almost never share the brand type filter, and the difference here is fundamental.

A good example for esports — an esports example — is the betting company BetBoom, which sponsored an esports team, creating a presence in broadcasts without the format of direct advertising. This is a fundamentally different approach from that of Intel, which through Intel Extreme Masters, holding tournaments with a total prize pool of over 2 million dollars in 2024 year, follows the model of classic title sponsorship.

What's next: from experiments to standard

The mobile gaming branding market is going through a phase of transition from fragmented experiments to a standardized channel. IAB is already developing measurement standards for in-game advertising, which means that unified CPM, viewability and engagement metrics will soon appear, comparable across platforms — currently each platform measures differently, making direct campaign comparison difficult. The number of advertisers in mobile games is growing by 40% year over year, and competition for quality slots is intensifying.

The second trend is metaverses as a distinct branding point, not reducible to 'advertising within a game.' NIKELAND and similar projects are not placement, but building a brand's permanent digital presence to which the audience returns on their own. For brands ready to make long-term investments, this is the next logical step after one-time integrations — but it requires a different budget and a different team than classic media purchasing.