Influence of Computer Games as an Advertising Medium on Brand Associations

The relevance of this paper is related to both the evolving personalization and the increasing opportunities for interactivity in the entertainment and marketing industries, as well as the diminishing role of television as a source of entertainment and information. This decreasing trend is important for marketers because less viewing time equals less chance of consumer impact through ads. The object of this research are video games as a channel for advertising messages and the subject matter is their influence on the brand associations of the advertised brands. For the purposes of this study, an experiment was developed involving three groups of respondents with the following structure: The first part is a photograph of a car and participants in the experiment must select three of the eleven possible car descriptions indicated. The second part of the experiment is a video clip, different for the three groups, which contains the same message for the three groups. The third part of the experiment gathers information about brand associations created and recalled through the ad clip. Free-text and multiple-choice questions are used. The last part assesses respondents' attitudes towards computer games and advertising messages in different environments. The study aims to analyze whether the contextual link between advertising content and the medium in which it is displayed has a beneficial effect on the brand associations of the promoted product. The experiment proved that the advertising environment influences brand associations when there is a contextual connection, overall pace and emotion of the advertising message. Subsequent research on the topic can further the results by using eye tracking technology to refine the results.