Adver­tis­ing has become part of every­day life. Every­where you look, every­thing you do involves an adver­tise­ment for some­thing whether you real­ize it or not. I just fin­ished watch­ing the first sea­son of Mad Men and one of the most intrigu­ing aspects of the show is the insight into the minds that shaped our mod­ern Amer­i­can consumerism.

My dad brought me a bag of mail this week­end that was filled with great exam­ples of how you can’t escape adver­tis­ing. I received a free Schick Quat­tro Tita­nium Trim­mer because I voted on how Ryan Nyquist should shave his beard for the X-Games. Pro­mot­ing a prod­uct, per­son, or event is just adver­tis­ing. If you look at the site I voted on they throw in a another ad for Thor Motocross imply­ing that Nyquist endorses the product.

This isn’t the first free promo I’ve received in the mail. In fact, I can’t tell you the last time I bought a razor because I man­age to keep find­ing free­bies with the help of sites like Spoofee. Peo­ple who loves deals spend their time putting together a col­lec­tion of dis­counts, coupons, and free­bies (read: hard to find ads). You could argue that since they are hard to find that they are not doing their job, but some­one post­ing that I could get a free razor, I in turn was exposed to four dif­fer­ent adver­tise­ments and spent the time to visit each of their home­pages and then blog about them. Not so inef­fec­tive now?

Of course there are going to be ads on the inter­net. That’s how it works. There are so many ads, in fact, that peo­ple have become used to them and sub­con­sciously block them out. Think about the last time you clicked on a ban­ner or even noticed it if it didn’t start scream­ing at you that, “you’ve been selected for a free (insert hot elec­tronic gad­get)…”. Smart, suave adver­tis­ing execs like Don­ald Draper real­ize this sort of thing and think about new places to stick ads– like video games.

My room­mates and I just picked up Mad­den 09 last week. I don’t play it seri­ous enough to notice any of the new fea­tures and would still be happy just play­ing Rush Attack or what­ever they call it now. I did notice a lack in adver­tis­ing, though. Sprint spon­sors the half time review, and I’ve seen a few ads for Snick­ers but that’s it. The weird­est part is that Tom Ham­mond keeps mak­ing these announce­ments that say some­thing along the lines of, “Let’s pause to remind you this game brought to you by EA Sports.” 

I can’t tell if it’s just shame­less self adver­tis­ing or if they didn’t sell to an adver­tiser or if an adver­tiser backed out… either way it comes across as plain annoy­ing to me. The game has been around for 20 years now and this year they threw the EA Sports logo in it every­where like it’s some­thing new! Are they merely mak­ing room for future adver­tise­ments? How long until they start adver­tis­ing beer in video games? Would my roommate’s XBOX Live account that says he’s 21+ allow them to stream in mature ads? Throw in ads for cars if you’re over 16 and just candy/snack ads if you’re younger? I don’t think that’s crazy given how Face­book Ads operate.

Why doesn’t EA Sports have a deal to men­tion Gatorade dur­ing time outs? You know it’s on every foot­ball field in Amer­ica. They’re miss­ing out on some easy cash. Would that be con­sid­ered a prod­uct place­ment inside the game? I think prod­uct place­ment in online videos will be the next wave of adver­tise­ment after pre-roll ads become inef­fec­tive. When will my favorite video game review site give their take on Mad­den 09, shame­less self pro­mo­tion, and prod­uct place­ments inside games and online videos?

In clos­ing, SHUT UP Cris Collinsworth! You are worse than Mad­den! Ok, I’m off to play some muted Mad­den to see which I notice more — the com­men­tary or the ads.