In-game advertising or IGA is the advertising of products or services in a video game. Even though it’s a marketing segment which a lot of people forget about, it is quite large and keeps growing every year. To give you a better idea of how much money is exactly involved, in 2004 in-game advertising generated a revenue of $34 million and in 2016 it generated $7.2 billion. This means the revenue became 212 times higher in just 12 years.

IGA can be found in any part of a game: it can be shown during loading screens, in the background in the form of a billboard or even fully integrated e.g. you can drive an Audi, Mercedes, Ferrari etc. in the Gran Turismo racing franchise. There are two different types of IGA that we can distinguish. First there’s static in-game advertising. This type is programmed into the game while it’s still being developed and remains unchanged. It can usually be found in singleplayer only games that have no online mode. Secondly we got dynamic IGA. These ads can be changed at any time (which makes them more lucrative) and are usually found in online multiplayer games because these games receive regular updates.