Nestle and Namco-Bandai have teamed up to promote to Nestle’s Aquapod bottled water with Active Life: Outdoor Challenge for the Wii. This is the second time that Nestle has used in-game advertising to promote Aquapod. Nestle is obviously looking to capitalize on the fitness games made popular by the Wii platform.

Further details can be found here courtesy of Nick DiMola at Nintendo World Report.

Game publishers and developers should check out this post by Neil Postlethwaite, Splash Damage’s former Managing Director. I wanted to highlight this post even though it is over a year old, because Neil communicated to the fan base of Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars in a very upfront manner that in order to support the game upon release that Splash Damage would be integrating in-game ads into the game.

To quote Neil:

Choosing to place ads in Enemy Territory was not a decision we made lightly. However, in doing so we hope to be able to provide a higher level of on-going support to the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars community than would have been possible otherwise.

This is the kind of transparency that publishers need to have with their customers (the gaming masses). It helps to reassure the gamers who might otherwise take offense to ads in-games, and does a better job of presenting the reasoning behind in-game advertising usage.

So here is an interesting tidbit… if you happen to have been alive between 1960 and 1970…

Activision and MTV Games are reportedly in discussions with Apple Corps and EMI to potentially license some Beatles tracks for use within the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. Bringing the Beatles brand into the music and rhythm games may work well to pull in a new demographic of gamers for Activision and MTV Games, and to help keep The Beatles brand name in the news.

We would personally love to see Sir James Paul McCartney take a stab at the game upon release.

Games can be branded in a multitude of ways, and the rhythm game genre opens up a number of opportunities for recording artists both young and old. In return for the attention the band brings to the game the cash sure won’t hurt anyone either, as CNET reports the deal “could be worth several million dollars”. ca-ching!

Send games to troops deployed to Iraq. To participate go here.

Call of Duty: World at War Trailer

Marketers, advertisers, and game developers are you ready?

Are you ready for the growth that is about to occur in the world of in-game advertising? PriceWaterhouseCoopers has just released their Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2008-2012 report. The report details the overall health of the video game industry as a whole and also touches on the increasingly important realm of in-game advertising.

Global growth in the industry will lead to $68.4 billion in sales by 2012, a very impressive number by itself. More impressive however, are the sales numbers forecast for in-game advertising which are pointing to a 16.7 percent annual growth rate between 2007 and 2012, resulting in total in-game advertising profits of $2.3 billion by 2012.

The growth is going to be crazy. Are you ready?

Flash Game ad provider Mochi Media has just closed a $10 million round of financing, adding to the war-chest of the San Francisco, CA based company. Their ad platform, MochiAds, is really tearing up the online gaming space and is assisting flash game developers in monetizing and distributing their work.

Jason Kincaid at Techcrunch outlines the largest threat facing Mochi’s efforts as “a constant threat from advertisers in the Flash movie space, who could easily shift their focus to gaming.” That said, Mochi Media chief executive Jameson Hsu will certainly be able to lead a stronger fight against those advertising rivals with the additional funding courtesy of Shasta Ventures and Accel Partners.

Game advertising is heating up on all fronts, not just on traditional console platforms.

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In case you missed it yesterday, there was a very promising report released on behalf of Nielsen Games and IGA Worldwide. The report details the findings of a study performed by Nielsen on the reactions of gamers to dynamic in-game advertising. The primary finding of this study was that 82% of gamers react positively to contextual in-game ads and that there is no loss of enjoyment when playing a game with in-game ads.

Gamasutra has a nice little write up here if you are looking for some more specifics.

The Nielsen/IGA Worldwide study further reinforces the findings of the Massive Inc/Interpret LLC study that was released back on June 3rd. Both of these studies will more than likely deliver some much needed reassurance to game developers worldwide as they debate whether or not begin further integration of in-game advertising into their revenue models.

If anything, these studies may at least help take some of the sting off of the painful memories around the release of Battlefield 2142 and the backlash related to EA’s release of that game two years ago complete with in-game advertising. I think for any developer contemplating the integration of ads into one of their titles, the controversy surrounding Battlefield 2142 comes to mind.