Game in the Game: Examining In-App Advertising in Mobile Sports Games

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine in-app advertisement within mobile games and the content of the advertisement. The universe of this study is sports game applications under games category in Apple Store. The sample is 32 sports games that were selected by random sampling method among popular games listed under sports category in Apple Store. Determined advertisements were analysed with the content analysis method. As a result of the research; it has been determined that sports games that are examined under mobile applications, primarily contain in-app advertisements for strategy, shopping, casino and bank applications, and games. Accordingly, more than half of the ads in evaluated mobile sports games were about mobile games and in-apps about mobile sports games were less. When in-app games were investigated in terms of appearance on screen, the great majority of mobile sport game ads were interstitial ads. As a conclusion; in spite of the changes in entertainment concept as a result of the developments in mobile technology, it has been determined that sport is used as direct or indirect marketing material as it is in the approach of traditional sports marketing. The implications from this research include a better understanding of how in-app advertising is being used to sports marketing and marketing communication.