A little while ago Ilya mentioned a new book about in-game advertising that has hit the market, 'Advergaming and In-Game Advertising" by Gerald Marolf. In the meantime I have received it, and want to give you a little review.
Let me say upfront, that I appreciate this is in actual fact a master-thesis that has been repackaged as a book - in other words, some academic rules have to be followed, which do not always co-incide with readability.
Generally speaking this is a pleasant read, giving a nice overview of what's been happening in gamevertising - but it sits in an uncomfortable middle ground. It's too expensive and academic for a straight forward book, but it's not comprehensive enough, and especially lacks a direction and an opinion to serve as a high end report.
Again, my general position on this book is that it's not too bad at all. There's a lot of excellent examples, good research notes, links and visuals. If that we're all to it, I could stop here, and tell you all to go and buy it. But there's a few negative points I have to make too.
Whereas the framework he is proposing from a marketing point of view, integrating into the four P's, certainly warrants further investigation, there are two particular elements that irritated me. In his set-up he names the whole category as Advergaming, and then breaks it down into two subsections, Adgames and In-game advertising. However, generally we speak about Gamevertising as the category, with the subsets advergaming (i.e. the game itself as the advertising medium) and in-game advertising (i.e. the game exists independently of the ads). Secondly he introduces the term En-game-ment, as a new monniker for Serious Games. I understand what he's trying to do here, but it's a horrid word, and just doesnt work. Also, I don't really see the need to replace the well-established term 'Serious Games'.
Another gripe: he falls into traps many marketers are still susceptible to - for instance taking the opinions of small but highly vocal groups on a specific forum as indicative for the stance of the general audience. The risk of 'negative brand interaction' is highlighted as well - which I think is taken far too serious by traditional marketers. Will your opinion of a brand change simply because you can shoot at a billboard, or because somebody else has shot at that billboard? I don't think so.
What I miss most, however, is the lack of conclusions, opinions, advice. Maybe it's due to the set-up he (had to) chose with his professor, but for a book sold to the general public it's a serious omission. Any reader not well immersed in the industry or research will feel confused at the end - "OK, now I know all these examples, but what should I do?"
Which leads me to my conclusion - to make sense, it needs reworking. Either take out the academics, and turn it into a nice book that serves as a general introduction - and sells at maybe $20. Or spice it up, get more concrete details and recommendations in there, and turn it into a high end report.
As a final note - it was already discussed in the comments on Ilya's article that the author is strangely invisible on the web. For a published author (he has written other marketing books before) this is remarkable. I could not find a website or email address to contact him. Maybe he will grace us with a visit to the blog discuss his insights a bit more. I'll gladly offer to publish a few articles.
(Dicslosure: Futurelab will shortly publish a book/report based on Ilya's thesis on in-game advertising).
P.S. By the way - dear publisher, don't you think it would make sense to send out review copies to the most relevant bloggers on this subject...?
Thanks for reviewing this. Appreciated.