But this shouldn't come as any surprise. In fact, this estimate is more conservative than in the past. Join me on a trip down memory lane for just a moment, back to the wonderful world of July 2007. Back then, the Yankee Group said that by 2011, in-game ad revenue could reach $971 million. So while in-game ads are on the rise, they may not be growing as quickly as originally thought!

eMarketer: U.S. In-Game Ads Market to More than Double to $650M by 2012 [GameDaily]

The best way to market your new console to gamers everywhere: make them evacuate their bladder in hysteria.

What more can be said about this Playstation 3 advertisement? A horrible, dead-eyed baby doll with its eyelids cut off and possessed by the souls of a thousand Chuckies screeches with the horrifying falsetto of Eraserhead's reptilian infant. Then its eyes begin to bleed... backwards.

It seems what the advertisement is saying is that the PS3 will cause your toys to come to life. Upon becoming sentient, these toys will go into the kitchen and remove a knife from the drawer. It will then creep to the bedroom where you're sleeping and, before you can wake, it will blind you, deafen you and cut out your tongue. The next hours will be spent cutting away wet pieces of you and you will experience it all in a black world sensationless but for your own terror and agony. Buy a PS3. Florian Eckhardt

Although we've seen the PS3 billboards before — and though all of us besides those Kotaku editors desperately phoning in the hard-hitting gaming "journalism" for which we're known felt our eyes glaze over and our middle fingers involuntarily twirling the mouse wheel past the mundane, uninspired posts — this one is interesting.

And not just because I'm posting it. Do you see that melting clock? Great Salvardor Dali's Ghost! Obviously, it's trying to tell us that the Playstation 3 is the hot console of this holiday season. But wait a second: is, perhaps, a national campaign showing a household appliance liquefying from the heat emanating off of the PS3 a wise move considering that Sony's stock has actually nose-dived after reports of all the overheating problems at TGS?

The short list of Playstation 3 advertising symbols, denoting the hotness:

1) Melting clock
2) The radioactive trunk from Repo Man
3) The Ark of the Covenant

Florian Eckhardt

I barely remember the nineties. What I do remember of it, was not like this. I remember is being an uncertain sort of between-time. This is just terrifying. "Fight Earwax"?

Thanks Siliconera.

Eliza Gauger

From the same Chinese ad agency that brought you this Coke meets World of Warcraft ad comes another one, in which an orc, a Tauren and a Troll leap through the screen to kidnap and carry off some attractive young Chinese girls. What low base urges drive the beasts in their kidnapping of hot Asian flesh? Probably eager for them to bite their wax tadpole. Florian Eckhardt

This will probably be obvious, but with nothing to actually launch in Europe this Christmas, Sony has dropped an axe on the meaty neck of its Europe and UK advertising campaign.

The campaign was set to cost about 50 million pounds across Europe and Australia, and was hailed as the most important advertisement campaign since, well, the launch of the PS2. What did Sony have in store for us? Well...

The first two - called "Real-time" and "Blu-ray" - feature a boxer and an avid collector respectively.

In the boxing ad, the short film dramatises the power the PS3 has to learn and counter a player's moves.

The film featuring the collector aims to illustrate Blu-ray technology's capability for storing information.

Other films include a children's craze called "speed stacking" to show the processing speed of the PS3; BMX trick riders to demonstrate how to play using body movement; and a behind-the-scenes look at King Kong and Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson's special effects studios to underline the console's cinema-level production quality.

In other words, 50 million pounds worth of bullshit. Florian Eckhardt

Ad campaign shelved after PlayStation delay [Guardian]

Notice anything a bit worrisome about this image from Target, advertising the 360? Like, that red ring of death, glowing like the unholy fiery eye of Sauron, revealing destruction to all who witness it?

Our tipster Nate hypothesizes this means that Target is happily selling dead 360s to people. We doubt it. More likely, they're just buffoons. Florian Eckhardt

Target's 360 Ad [Target]

Now including effete, pink crushed velvet clad panty-sniffers! That's meant to be the Playstation triangle he's dreamily snorting the musk from, by the way.

Some more after the jump. Courtesy of B&B&P&S. Florian Eckhardt

Can you help Journey escape from the arena of rock through hordes of love-crazed groupies? Affirmative. I like to think that the life system works on the principle that you can only collide with so many groupies until you are so drained that you ejaculate the spools of your intestines. Although I hope the health system works different when you collide with those "shifty-eyed promoters." Florian Eckhardt

That title's some sort of attempt at a Lost in Translation pun. Jeez, I dunno — it's early and I'm filled with self-loathing. Anyway, danke schoen to Cadaver for calling our attention to this deliciously retro Claymation ad for Final Fantasy VI. Is there anything sadder than the fact that computer animation has almost entirely driven into extinction the art of squishing Playdough together with your thumbs into the shape of Mog, then giving him a Ralph Kramden style voice? Florian Eckhardt

... their crotch! And with one single banner, every male Kotaku editor immediately opens a MySpace account:

as i was responding to a message to a friend on myspace this morning (yes, i know, i still have myspace) i happened to look up and notice the banner at the top of the page. as you can see from the screen cap attached here, it seems that murdoch may be changing his advertising strategy. horny gamer girls indeed! the images on the banner even move up and down to make it seem that much more real to lonely gamer guys who need horny gamer girls.

Jeez, who doesn't need 'em? Thanks to our media darling brethren over at Consumerist for forwarding Adam B's email along! Florian Eckhardt

Crecente posted this London Dutch ad for the new white PSP, he preceded his post with the words 'I hate to spur the ire of Florian...' He then insinuated that the image represented an Aryan Ku Klux Klan super model abusing a black woman for not referring to her as 'massa'.

Well, Crecente's right about one thing: I don't think the above image is racist. Here's an image from the same shoot, as viewable on the official Sony Europe site:

I suppose some will claim that this is equally racist, as it features a stereotypical black criminal mugging a poor white woman. I, on the other hand, view this in relation to the resulting outcry and find it absurd that Americans seem to have lost any point of reference in what racism actually is. I simply can not believe that to some people a photograph of two absolutely beautiful women posing as avatars for different PSP models is now equivalent to flaming upside down crosses.

What is racism? Racism is a calculated and rationalized loathing of a person based solely upon the color of their skin. It isn't anthropomorphizing the struggle between two aesthetic choices in a video game console. An advertising technique, I'd point out, you often see in commercials for anything from chocolate ice cream to darker shades of lipstick.

Within context of all the ads, the campaign makes it very clear that white isn't supposed to be superior black, or vice versa. The worst that can be said about the campaign is that it's ill-advised. If it's guilty of anything, it isn't racism, it's insensitivity to the hyperactive political correctness of an American audience it isn't even aimed towards.

Pointing out that a black person is black and a white person is white isn't racism. Juxtaposing artistically the opposing colors of their skin isn't either. There's no shame in pointing out the color of a person: racism isn't making the observation that a person is black, it's making the observation, then hating them for it. Florian Eckhardt

Update: Sony's saying the same thing

Dale's old VHS collection was in need of some attention. He could have sworn he had a full tape of the Red Shoe Diaries just waiting for some special care. Halfway through a cardboard box marked "KTCHN CLOSET" he stumbled on what will, in time, be recognized as the greatest archaeological find of the 21st century.

Thanks Dale!Eliza gauger

The less said about this Best Buy advertisement (which apes a Gamespot 'feature' so successfully that we actually had to rub our eyes a few times in total incredulity few minutes before we discerned the difference), the better. In it, three Best Buy blue shirt putzes regurgitate common gamer knowledge about the next gen with authority.

We wouldn't even link it if Cheap Ass Gamer hadn't so expertly skewered it. Hit the original, then hit the parody. They cynically aced the feel with only a tithing of the pedestrian verbiage!

Ooooo! I think I know who Best Buy's going to try to sue next! Florian Eckhardt

Best Buy Q&A [Gamespot]
Not A Best Buy Q&A at Gamespot [Cheap Ass Gamer]

A respectable first pass at illustrating the common logic that women are brainless automatons waiting to have their subservient existence as barefoot kitchen rustlers programmed into them by a virile man. But it needs further revision.

As Apple's famous iPod advertisements have shown, a single lucid visual metaphor is the holy grail of marketing. The girl, the bed, the whole of the Playstation controller are superfluous elements that muddle the message. Here's my brave suggestion for Che gaming ad v2: an extreme close up of the female clitoris branded with a green Sony Playstation triangle.

Irony ends here. FLORIAN ECKHARDT

Sexist italian video game advertisement [Destructoid]

As uncomfortable as it makes many gamers, opening up the computer games platform to big corporates as a way to get eyeballs on brands can be a very lucrative trade-off for developers. Digital luddites argue including billboards or product sponsors into virtual environments breaks the immersive quality of gameplay - and certainly this is true if the advertising is implemented in an obtrusive or nonsensical way - but those thousands of dollars could provide a cushion for an ailing developer and may be a lifeline for a future, more innovative project. Immersion could even be increased, as appropriate advertising may enhance the agency of the player.

We think most gamers are amenable to in-game advertisements but they expect advertisements to make game prices go down. Most other advertising-financed media is either free (for example, Kotaku) or extremely inexpensive in comparison to the $50 or $60 expense of a game. Keeping game prices the same and then making additional money by subjecting us to ads during our escapist gaming sessions feels somehow like an insult.

A great example of an otherwise excellent game company that squandered a lot of good will by doing this is Irrational. They released SWAT 4 at full price then patched in-game advertising in. Gamers who might otherwise have felt strongly enough against in game advertisements to boycott the game therefore couldn't do it. It was a cheap, cynical and shady move from an otherwise great dev house.

What do you guys think?

Alternative funding models Part 1 [Guardian Gamesblog]