Advertising in video games: the mobile network buy, the in-world placement and the platform activation, and what each one can be measured on

Advertising in video games means three different things, and a brand that approves a budget for one and receives another has usually not been misled so much as never told. The first is the mobile game buy, where your advertisement is a video or a playable unit served between levels through an ad network, and the game is just the place it appears. The second is in-world placement, where your brand sits inside the game as a billboard, a hoarding or a product the player uses. The third is a platform activation, where you build something inside a user-generated world such as Roblox or Fortnite and players choose to visit it. Different sellers, different production bills, and three different answers to the question of what counts as a view.

The three purchases, side by side

	Mobile game network buy	In-world placement	Platform activation
What the player sees	A video, interstitial or playable between levels, often in exchange for a reward	Your brand on surfaces inside the game world	A place or an item inside a world they chose to enter
Bought from	Ad networks and mediation platforms, in an auction	In-game advertising vendors who serve into the 3D scene, or the publisher directly	Specialist studios who build on the platform, plus the platform's own ad products
Priced as	Impressions or installs, at auction	Impressions, with a campaign minimum	A build cost plus promotion, like a production rather than a media buy
Creative needed	Vertical video, and a playable if you want the best rates	Image or video assets to the vendor's specification	An experience, designed and built. This is the expensive one
Lead time	Days	Weeks	Months
Best at	Volume, installs, direct response	Presence in a world the audience already inhabits	Time spent with the brand, and something to film

The mobile buy, which is most of the market

Most money described as in-game advertising is this: video and playable units inside free mobile games, bought through ad networks and mediation platforms in the same way other app inventory is bought. The format that matters is the rewarded unit, where the player chooses to watch in exchange for a life, a hint or currency, because a viewer who opted in behaves differently from one who was interrupted.

• Make it vertical and make it loud in the first second. The unit plays full screen with sound on more often than anywhere else in digital.
• Test a playable. A short interactive demo of your product or game typically earns the best rates in this inventory, and it costs more to produce, which is the trade.
• Watch where it ran. Network inventory spans thousands of titles. Ask for a placement report and exclude what does not suit the brand.
• Mind who is playing. A large share of players in some titles are children, which brings children's privacy rules into the brief and restricts both targeting and content. Settle that with the seller in writing before creative is made.

In-world placement, which is the one people picture

Your brand appears on a surface inside the game: the hoardings around a pitch in a sports title, a billboard on a racing circuit, a vending machine in a city street, a drink the character carries. Two ways it gets sold, and the difference matters commercially.

• Static placement is built into the game before release. It is permanent, it cannot be changed or measured per impression, and it is negotiated with the publisher like a product placement in a film.
• Dynamic placement is served into the scene at runtime by an in-game advertising vendor, companies such as Anzu and Bidstack among others, so the same billboard can show different brands in different countries and can be reported on like media.

The hard question in this format is what counts as a view. A billboard your camera passed at speed, at an angle, in the dark, is not the same as one you walked up to. Ask any seller which measurement standard they report against: the IAB has published guidelines specifically for measuring intrinsic in-game advertising, and a seller who can name them and say how they comply is a seller worth continuing with. A seller who answers with total audience size is answering a different question.

Platform activations, which are productions and not media

Building a branded world, a game mode or a wearable item inside a user-generated platform is the format that gets written about, and it is the one most often miscosted. You are commissioning a build and then buying attention for it, which means two budgets rather than one. Launching without the second produces an empty world, which is the normal failure here.

• Pick the mechanic before the brand idea. Players come for something to do. A faithful replica of your shop with nothing to do in it gets a visit and no second visit.
• Budget promotion at the same level as the build. Creators, platform ad products and your own channels have to bring the first players.
• Agree what success is in advance. Visits, repeat visits, median time spent, items equipped. Pick two and write them into the brief.
• Plan for the audience being young. Moderation, chat, data collection and what you may say to children are design constraints, not a legal review at the end.
• Decide who owns the build. The studio, the platform account and the assets should be named in the contract, in the same way any other production is.

Why brands are here at all

Gaming is not a youth medium and has not been for a long time: the players span every adult age group and roughly half are women, which makes the audience a mainstream one with an unusual property, that it is reachable in a place where attention is voluntary and sustained. The trade body for the industry publishes an annual survey of who plays in the United States, and that is the figure to quote in a plan rather than a number from a deck, because this is the statistic most often repeated three years out of date.

The honest counterpoint is that two of these three formats are expensive relative to what a small advertiser gets from them, which is why the mobile network buy is where most brands should start. If your reason for being here is reach on a screen rather than presence inside a game, the arithmetic for the alternative is in connected TV advertising, and where this sits among the other channels is in paid advertising platforms.

The questions that separate a real proposal from a slide

• Which of the three am I buying? If the answer covers two, ask for the split by spend.
• Which titles, by name, and what share of delivery in each? A list of logos is not a plan.
• What counts as an impression here, and against which standard?
• What is the campaign minimum, and what does it buy in weeks?
• What production do I have to supply, and by when? This is where in-game budgets overrun.
• What is the age profile of the audience, and what does that restrict?
• What will the end of campaign report contain? Ask for a sample report from a previous campaign with the brand name removed.

Measuring it without fooling yourself

• Direct response from the mobile buy is measurable in the normal way: installs, sign ups, cost per action, with the usual care about which platform claims the credit.
• Brand effect from placement needs a before and after or a held out region, because there is nothing to click on a billboard inside a racing game.
• Activations report platform metrics, and the ones that mean something are repeat visits and median session length rather than total visits.
• Branded search is the shared early signal. In all three formats, more people searching your name in the weeks after launch is the cheapest evidence that anybody noticed.

Questions about advertising in video games

How much does in-game advertising cost?

The mobile buy starts at ordinary digital budgets and scales. Dynamic in-world placement carries campaign minimums in the thousands, because the vendor is selling managed media. A platform activation is a production and is priced like one, usually with a second budget of similar size to bring players to it.

Is this the same as esports sponsorship?

No. Esports sponsorship buys association with a team, a league or a broadcast, and it is negotiated like sports sponsorship. In-game advertising puts your brand inside the game itself.

Does advertising inside games annoy players?

It depends entirely on the format. Rewarded video is chosen by the player and is generally accepted. An interruption in the middle of a paid premium game is the version players object to, which is why that inventory is rarely sold.

Can a small business advertise in games?

Through the mobile network buy, yes, in the same way it would buy any other app inventory, with a local geography and a tight audience. In-world placement and activations are not small budget formats.

What creative do I need?

Vertical video with sound for mobile, plus a playable if the budget allows. Image and video assets to specification for in-world placement. For an activation, a designed experience, which is a commission rather than an asset.

How do I avoid my brand appearing next to something unsuitable?

Ask for the title list and the placement report, use the exclusions the platform offers, and remember that user-generated worlds carry content the platform did not author. Agree what happens, in writing, if your brand appears somewhere you would not have chosen.

The place a player checks before they buy anything

All three formats above work on recognition: they put the brand in front of somebody at play so the name is familiar later. The later moment has moved. A buyer deciding between products increasingly asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude which one to get, and takes the two or three names that come back with a line of description each, assembled from reviews, articles and retailer pages rather than from any campaign. A brand paying to be remembered has a direct interest in what that answer currently says. AI Knows Us asks those buying questions across the main assistants and records which brands get named and what the answers were built from.