Leading National Advertisers' Uses of Advergames

Abstract By analyzing the 294 advergames integrated in the Web sites of the top 100 leading national advertisers ranked by total advertising expenditures, the current study provides a descriptive study of the actual use of advergames on the leading advertisers' Web sites. Although there were still many advertisers that had not yet adopted advergames, those that had implemented advergames were using them a great deal on their Web sites. The most prominent of such companies were in the food industry. The findings showed that branded products were often embedded as a major component of advergames that fit well with the products in terms of lifestyle and image fit. Regarding the strategic features of advergames, this study demonstrates that many advertisers did not use such features to their fullest potential. Implications of the findings for practitioners and future research were discussed.