Maybe this should go in improvement suggestions, idk.

There is a lot of ad space in game, barriers, billboards, pit walls etc that could be linked up to (for instance) google adds. I imagine there will be a lot of objections and I would be mildly against it too but its only a mater of time before this kind of thing becomes common in games and I'm guessing the first game that can make it work will very quickly become the king of the gaming hill, advertisers want their ads to be seen after all.

Another thought is skins, there are a lot of really skillful designs, many of them giving free advertisement to products, has anyone ever tried getting any kind of sponsorship from companies? I doubt coca cola would be interested but it makes sense for internet based companies.

Thanks.

I think the on-track advertising has been suggested before and agreed upon that it's in principle a good idea, but there are just worries about mass downloads every time they change. As for car skins, I think quite a few teams/drivers are indeed sponsored by some companies

Mass downloads? The default LFS adverts are just over 2MB. The last 20 skins I downloaded were 3MB. I highly doubt the adverts would change every day or week, maybe every few months. I'm sure if the devs wanted to they could do it in the same way as skin downloads when you go online.

Quote from CheerioDM :

Your face should go in improvement suggestions.
And Google sucks.
Why not just throw in a copy of Mein Kampf while you're at it.
"Don't be evil. Don't be Google."

You're cute.

Some advertising system like used in Burnout Paradise (correct me if I'm wrong) would be great, also for some developing money.

If the advertisements stay on track (where the original in-game ads are) then i'd say that this is a very good idea.

Quote from CheerioDM :

Your face should go in improvement suggestions.
And Google sucks.
Why not just throw in a copy of Mein Kampf while you're at it.
"Don't be evil. Don't be Google."

What is wrong with you?
What does a suggestion about live-ads in LFS has anything to do with the book you refer to? I think it is really sad you have to get down on that kind of level.. Get a life.

To the ads. I think it's a good idea. As far as I remember Trackmania Nations did the same thing. They had changing ads. And a 10-20 MB download every couple of days (could be split between days/races etc. shouldn't be that big of a problem nowadays. As long as the money goes into the development.

well if someone advertises this



i will crash

As a major online advertiser myself (6 figure spend per month) I simply would not be interested in placing adds in to LFS myself, even though I represent many automotive companies.

Online advertising revolves around the concept of "return on investment". An in game advert wouldn't be clickable, and therefor it's effectiveness can't be measured unless LFS openend popups, and if LFS did that the term "over my dead body" springs to mind.

Quote from Becky Rose :

As a major online advertiser myself (6 figure spend per month) I simply would not be interested in placing adds in to LFS myself, even though I represent many automotive companies.

Online advertising revolves around the concept of "return on investment". An in game advert wouldn't be clickable, and therefor it's effectiveness can't be measured unless LFS openend popups, and if LFS did that the term "over my dead body" springs to mind.

I can see your point, on the other hand, an advert during an F1 Weekend at the track is also not clickable (well yeah, it's not online) and still the companies do pay for the ads. The measurement has to be done from the timing (weekend) the ad is placed onwards. An ad in game (preferably a broadcasted race as the audience is bigger) can also be measured by the timing of the race (or if not broadcasted, by the timing of the period of time the ad is payed for).
For example, company A pays for in-game ads in week 20 of the year 2013. So, to measure if the ad was any successful company A has to evaluate sales / new visitors on the website etc. from week 20 on and with some Business Intelligence it is possible to separate the impact from the other factors that play into sales / new visitors..
Hopefully I could make my point clear through the language barrier...

Advertisments is a virus that we need to supress in every possible way (speaking in philosophical terms). In Practical terms it may do some good in the short run. In a racing game such as LFS, why not use the banners. Ok with me, as long as no pop-ups appear. The comerce is crazy enough as it is.

FYI, technically you can advertise in LFS. The only problem is, everyone has to download the DDS files you make your advertisements on. If I am not mistaken.

I can't ever see real-world adverts working in sims/games. there's a hard to pin down awareness of being in a virtual world (compared to reality) which would dispel the whole point of advertising in the game.

If i recall correctly, LFS is already doing ingame advertising, the billboards have real world companies right now. Intel, BMW, Michelin, and a few others.


And as someone mentions, Burnout has real world companies in it, NFS has real world companies in a few of it's games as well.

Just because it's a virtual world, does not mean real world company advertising will not work or be applicable.

Quote from Torben :

I can see your point, on the other hand, an advert during an F1 Weekend at the track is also not clickable (well yeah, it's not online) and still the companies do pay for the ads. The measurement has to be done from the timing (weekend) the ad is placed onwards. An ad in game (preferably a broadcasted race as the audience is bigger) can also be measured by the timing of the race (or if not broadcasted, by the timing of the period of time the ad is payed for).
For example, company A pays for in-game ads in week 20 of the year 2013. So, to measure if the ad was any successful company A has to evaluate sales / new visitors on the website etc. from week 20 on and with some Business Intelligence it is possible to separate the impact from the other factors that play into sales / new visitors..
Hopefully I could make my point clear through the language barrier...

I have to disagree. Billboard advertising is "brand" advertising. It has no direct effect and is usually done as part of an overall brand awareness campaign. This only works for companies that have so much coverage that they are part of our everyday lives / consciousness. That sector of the advertising industry is suffering from massive decline, it's one of the factors hurting the terrestrial television broadcasters and print magazine industries which have seen people like me nibble away at their market share in recent years.

Also in regards testing the only true measure of a tested campaign is side-by-side testing when other factors can be ruled out. This form of testing, called "split testing" is the only viable mechanism for testing because it rules out other market factors.

For instance the busiest day of the week for most online vendors is a Monday, weekends are generally quite poor by comparison. The first week of the month is the strongest, the third the slowest and so on and so on...

Tests which are compared over time always generate invalid results, so all reliable testing in the internet sector is done side by side.

To my knowledge there are still only a handful of companies to invest in in game advertising, I believe Intel did it with a Counter Strike game some years back, or something of the sort, but the point is it was Intel - and not Miscellaneous Retailer Number 3158125243. Intel is a name that is already etched into the consciousness of the planet.

Track side advertisements are too minor, but I might consider a more stronger branding of one of my lines within LFS such as if I could get Brembo prominently featured throughout the game, possibly even working it in to the game mechanics to help reinforce the message that Brembo Max discs stop faster in the wet than OE discs then there might be some merit in getting involved in a game of this nature - but mostly I would prefer to stick to advertising I can directly measure - and as a player I hate the thought of the mechanics being polluted in this way.

So the best solution is just to namedrop my client in a conversation like this on a forum with a few hundred thousand members and do that just every now and then to get the message across to the same audience for absolutely free.

BTW If you need a discount to get better brakes on your car and save the lives of those you love and not kill innocent children by failing to stop in time then just fire me a PM.

On thing overlooked there with brand advertising is the net can do something tv, magazines etc. generaly don't, localise. A billboard can advertise 'Dempsy's chip's, Blessington' or 'Blacknight webspace, Ireland' for me here and different local/national advertisers for someone else.

As to ingame billboard ad's not being clickable, I doubt the ratio of web ad's seen/clicked is even 1 in 10000, I've clicked on less than half a dozen in my life and must have seen hundreds of thousands by now. Namedropping seems to be the most effective form of web ad's atm (iRacing, costs hundreds, aimed at race drivers etc) and shows that brands still matter.

Shoppers do click ads, and despite what everyone says more shoppers click them than being #1 in Google.

You can argue or disagree all you like, but I have measurable figures which says SEO and organic conversions is not nearly as profitable as PPC and CRO.

Or in non jargon speak, yer gonna keep seeing ads.

Quote :

Or in non jargon speak, yer gonna keep seeing ads.

Quote :

This only works for companies that have so much coverage that they are part of our everyday lives / consciousness. That sector of the advertising industry is suffering from massive decline, it's one of the factors hurting the terrestrial television broadcasters and print magazine industries which have seen people like me nibble away at their market share in recent years.

That to me is a big issue, advertising seems self destructive or maybe destructive to the advertising medium. I'm sure the first TV ads where a huge success which attracted more advertising etc etc to the current day when folks are subjected to a barrage of garish ads played at high volume when all they want to do is relax, the result being they don't want to watch TV anymore. I more or less stopped buying magazines when I realized the features where getting less, the ads more and only about 10% of the pages had anything I wanted to read. Same with the net, a page full of ads will be closed almost immediately unless it has something I really need to see (even then it rarely does, just carefully chosen keywords to get me to it) and any page with ads that start making noises at me gets venomously closed with a mental note never to buy from those a**holes. This kind of BS is the last thing I ever want to see in LFS or any other game.

What I would like to see is the dev's making an income from in game ads using more or less the same amount of advertising space presently in game.

Quote :

If i recall correctly, LFS is already doing ingame advertising, the billboards have real world companies right now. Intel, BMW, Michelin, and a few others.

Thanks, I hadn't consciously noticed but now you mention it I have been thinking about Electro Static Loudspeakers a lot lately Was thinking how the boards could be displaying ads more relevant to me, for instance car ads from the most popular classified add site here, Done Deal. More or less every country has something like this and seeing an ad for a GTD for sale in my area when leaving the pits would have an effect. The guy selling the GTD would have paid a couple of euro to place the ad so there is money in circulation and the ad also advertises the site. As Becky says there is no way of clicking on the ad, a page with a list of advertisers would be a clunky way around that, maybe clickable billboards when spectating could work? The problem with this is how to access these kind of local ads and sites on a global scale, as far as I know there is no ad broker doing this kind of thing.

Quote :

As for car skins, I think quite a few teams/drivers are indeed sponsored by some companies

That is cool, some skinners are really talented and deserve to make something out of it.
Just a though on that, its all 'for instance'.
Pepsi offer $20 payed into LFS account for the best pepsi skin. Once pepsi have the skin they pay LFS $20 and a limited number of players can get sponsorship for using that skin, from 1 or 2 cents for a random player up to dollars for a top class player in a championship series and depending on results. Getting real money out should be possible but if it only stayed in LFS it would allow demo racers to progress for free and experienced racers to sponsor demo racers and events.

EDIT Damn thats a long post, sorry for the wall of text.

Becky, put CTRA back up and incorporate ads in it so theoreticaly everyone will be happy

Quote from e.m :

becky, put ctra back up and incorporate ads in it so theoreticaly everyone will be happy :d

+1

LFS in-game adverts should be like the adverts in most websites... you pay for a size and time spent for advertising. In that way LFS developers may get more money from advertising other stuff... Just saying...

Quote from delis :

LFS in-game adverts should be like the adverts in most websites... you pay for a size and time spent for advertising. In that way LFS developers may get more money from advertising other stuff... Just saying...

it should be a cache'd 50/60 mb that specific Brands/businesses go for and you're game auto updates daily to changes ( or server )


Direct connection to a market of folks un-afraid to drop change on what they want... Sheep be sheep etc.