Branding, like Sponsorship is an easy entry strategy. Branding can be as simple as sponsorship or can be extended to Billboards. Within the game, apparel, vehicles or whatever could lend itself to simple product messages in the game.

The no 1. selling football game FIFA 06 is being sponsored by a lot of brands who’s logo appear at the start of every game, on billboards alongside the pitch and on the t-shirts of the players.
The sponsorship and branding in FIFA 06 is localized. A game player who chooses Dutch as their language gets different billboards than someone who, for example, chooses English

A more involved manner for an advertiser to be part of the game experience is through product placement. This can be an extension of a bill boarding and sponsorship campaign. A 3D dimensional product can also be made interactive

Food company Dole developed a product placement and
billboard campaign for the family videogame Super Monkey Ball by
Sega to promote a new luxury banana. the aim of the game is to collect as many banana’s within a certain timeframe while rolling a monkey around in a opaque ball.

The best, most involved brand experience in In-game advertising is with the integration of brands or products in the gameplay itself. To make a product ‘playable’ for a consumer.

‘Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow’ has the main character, anti-terrorist Sam Fisher, using a Sony Ericsson camera phone to take pictures and a Sony Ericsson smart phone to communicate to superiors.

As a marketing tool ingame advertising and branding could be even further extended by co-operating with the game publisher on promotional activities. Making product available in shops outside your own branch, combining forces on other media outings etc.

The succes of the racing franchise Gran Turismo, which sold 35 million copies worldwide to date, is in part due to the fact that players can drive around in virtual representations of real production cars. The development team had acces to all the data from car companies, recorded engine noises, did test-drives etc. Based on the promotional success of the ingame representation of their PT Cruiser, Chrysler decided to release a special, real world PT Cruiser, Gran Turismo edition.