Demographic differences in recall and recognition rates of in-game advertisements

Abstract

In recent years, there has been growing interest from advertisers in product placements in video games. While studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of such in-game advertisements, they have generally been limited owing to the profile of respondents, who were younger and of male gender. With the growing number of gamers from other demographic groups, this study aims to establish whether there is any difference in the effectiveness of in-game advertisements across demographic segments. For this study, 58 participants were selected. Participants were instructed to play a racing game on a computer tablet. This was followed by a test of the respondents’ rate of recall and recognition of the in-game advertisements. Results showed that there is no difference in the recall and recognition rates between the genders. However, respondents from the younger demographic group are more likely to have higher rates of recall and recognition as compared with respondents from the older demographic group. This suggests that, in targeting older consumers using in-game advertisements, marketers need to develop different strategies to increase the recall and recognition rates.