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Balasubramanian (1994) defined product placement as a paid product message aimed at influencing audiences via the planned and unobtrusive entry of a branded product into a movie or television programme. While product placement was first introduced in other media, it eventually made its way into video games as in-game advertisements. Game developers realised that brand owners will be willing to pay to have their brands featured in their games, especially when the games appeal to the same target market as the brand (Nichols et al., 2006).
As in-game advertisements became a staple in marketing communications, there has been many studies conducted to examine its effectiveness. Many of these studies have focused on brand recall and recognition. In general, the studies have concluded that the rate of brand recall and recognition can be lower when compared to other media (Y. Kim, Walsh, & Ross, 2008). However, the rate of recall can also be raised by making the brand more prominent in the game or through repeated exposure (Chaney et al., 2004; Dardis et al., 2012; Y. Kim & Leng, 2017; M. Lee & Faber, 2007; Leng et al., 2010; Nelson, 2002; Schneider & Cornwell, 2005; Yang & Wang, 2008).
Lang (2000) has suggested that people are information processors. According to the Limited Capacity Model of Mediated Message Processing, a person’s ability to process information is limited. When a person allocates more cognitive resource to a task, it inevitably means that less cognitive resource can be allocated to other tasks. As such, some studies have found that gamers who are highly involved when playing games are likely to have lower rates of recall and recognition of in-game advertisements (Chaney et al., 2004; Herrewijn & Poels, 2013; M. Lee & Faber, 2007; Yoo & Peña, 2011).