Well played, advertiser. Well played.

My tank is off to see Detective Westbrush, so I'm cruisin' Skyway City and what do I see on my way there:



As Seen On TV! Truly epic win.

... Would it be so wrong to ask for /em clanket?

Nice.

I'd agree about the "well played" but it's not actually an advertisement.

Player designed billboard contest winners.

I'd guess it's either that the contest judges didn't stop to think that "As Seen On TV" is an actual real-life brand, or they enjoyed the joke enough that they didn't care.

I suppose it's an open question whether the "As Seen On TV" people (they have actual brick and mortar stores around here) would view it as good-natured free advertising or feel obliged to do something about it.

I do agree that it's a winner of a billboard, regardless.

And out of those shown, I'd have to agree with their choice, though my namesake would sigh to herself on the product.

It raises an interesting question, actually.

When we had real-world ads in the game a few years ago, they were for specific products and they ran for specific periods of time, or seemed to. They also showed up on practically every bill-board in the game, which created some interesting "over-exposure" in certain ruined city zones like Siren's Call.

There's another class of advertising called "institutional ads" whose aim is to keep awareness of the company at a certain level; particularly when they are between product launches and there's no current "shiny" for consumers to get excited about.

While the original real-world ads apparently didn't pan out, the "Clanket" suggests that a well-designed "ad" that was consistent with the game world and whose goal was institutional awareness, rather than sales, could actually be a successful ad campaign.

Players who would ignore a bill-board advertising the newest Ford truck, might well turn around and make a big deal about an ad for the new rocket board that's "built Ford tough".

If you could watch a Ford commercial and then have the Ford Tough Rocket Board added to your game account, that would be an even more interesting situation.

This last form of advertising already exists for at least one brand-name game. The login screen informs you when the RNG has picked your account to receive a bonus, and it gives you a button that you can press or ignore. Pressing it takes you to the commercial, and when the commercial finishes, the resulting "continue" button awards your prize to your account.

As examples, my characters in that game (a mostly social-oriented sandbox) have special advertising-supported items that include an Alienware tee-shirt (looks pretty cool, really; black with the white alien head), Hoodwinked movie posters to put on house walls, and assorted vanity pets including Bambi and Dukey the dog from the Johnny Test cartoon.

If Freedom achieves some respectable user numbers, I could see this sort of advertising (voluntarily watch a commercial, get a power/costume/emote/base furniture as a reward) as a potential revenue stream for Paragon Studios. Especially if they landed advertisers who were willing to customize the advertising to the market and not just run their every-day TV ads.

The ad is excellent. Who is the player who created it?

And yes, the "As Seen on TV" logo is apparently public domain.

HAHA! That is excellent!
Well played indeed!

I love this advert. It really brightened my day when I first saw it and keeps brightening my gaming experience as I witness it further. Lots of good lolz. :-)

The Devs and the IRL Ad companies missed an opportunity to make In-Game Ads work for each other and the players.

How it should have worked was that the Billboards would have been interactive-clickable. Think about the Jeter Clutch tennis shoe ad. Had that ad been interactive-clickable and offered a 5% movement boost for an hour or for 20 minutes, like getting a Mystic Fortune/Secondary Mutation buff, even with a 1/toon/day, it would have been way more successful. They could have also included in the click either a popup window or chat pannel text with a coupon code to the online shoe manufacturer-sales-dealer. The ad company could have tracked the clicks/day and turned in a report about how much market presence the In-Game ad had, and the manufacturer-seller-dealers could have used the coupon code's usage to gauge the success of the campaign.

The Tony Hawk N-Gage ad could have provided toons with an temporary In-Game N-gage with which to contact their contacts sooner(kinda mootish now-but still...). And a coupon code to Nokia's webpage that would help a player procure their own N-Gage IRL. AND on top of that, the purchase of the N-Gage could have had a GAME CODE that unlocked the In-game N-Gage series of animations and emotes, such that: the player's Police Radio/Newspaper contacts could(optionally) have the toon pull out their In-game N-Gage and use that for getting those missions, and when the player calls a contact, out comes the In-Game N-Gage. And maybe even applying the N-Gage GAME CODE would allow toons to fill contact bars of pre-maturely Inactive Contacts(because, sheesh, something should) how awesome would that have been!?!

Think about Reese's candy company. What if they had an interactive-clickable In-Game ad that gave the clicker a Reese's Pieces Inspiration. The popup/chat text could have read: Reese's Pieces is honored to provide super powered Inspirations to this Cities super powered citizens, and then asked weather the character would like to accept a Reese's Piece Inspiration and warned the player that the character has to have an open space in their inspirations tray. The Reese's Inspiration(In-game appearence just like the candy) could have done anything and been random with random effects or be specific, like the dark brown ones could have been a RECHARGE inspiration that boosted the toons recharge by 5% for a minute, the orange ones could be resistance inspirations with the same effects or anything else as a temporary inspiring boost. Also, with a coupon code that could be used online at Reese's store to obtain a printable coupon for a free bag of Reese's Pieces or $0.50 off. Anything could have been possible with this kind of advert. And it could have been very successful.{Alternately M&Ms(with the Peanut M&Ms being bigger Inspirations) or even Skittles}

Actual OUTBACK Steakhouse Billboards with a interactive/clickable that gives a Bloomin' Onion Temporary Power that acts as a one use AoE sleep/stun(16 targets max) that makes the enemies wander, jauntily sporting their new Bloomin' Onion Auras, out of the mission door with word bubbles over their heads that say: No Rules. Just Right, and have that count as defeats for drops and rewards. Again, with coupon codes to Outback Steakhouse for a good deal on a good meal. All trackable by all parties involved in the campaign.

This could have been very successful and enjoyable In-game advertising from real world companies. I get a "High jump with low ceiling" feeling about how it was done/not done.
Coulda shoulda woulda.

The player made billboards are lots of fun and all very creative. They show some of the potential I talked about above.

/em Clanket ?!!

/signed

This is why I like the "watch a commercial, get a reward" method. It's all voluntary and the advertising is all outside of the game environment.

This is one of those "solution in search of a problem" things, so I don't expect we'll see anything for a long time, if ever.

To own his each gobby. I would have enjoyed it.

In-game ads for In-game stuffs then? An interactive billboard for the Golden Giza that gives you another shot at a certain machines' arc(as long as you meet the requirements)even if you outleveled it. An El Super Mexicano billboard that gives you a token that you can take to an El Super Mexicano location for a breakfast taco Inspiration.
I would love it if the Clanket Ad gave your toon a "Clanket" emote even for just a short time; with Lost trying to lower each other down to it so they can click on the ad too, or Trolls trying to form a pyramid to get access to it. That's just pure fun right there.

But NOOOOO!!!! Gaming is Srs Bsns...apparently.

I'll be In-game enjoying it as-is reguardless of easily offended awful attitudes. All pretendy-funtime goodness.