Video game publishers want your money, and they’re willing to spend plenty of their own greenbacks to get it. According to an article on Adweek, which draws on information from researcher eMarketer, video game advertising is set to see spending double to $1 billion by 2012. The majority of growth will occur in casual Web-based games rather than in the more high-profile console game space.

According to a new eMarketer report, marketers last year spent more than $500 million on video game advertising of various forms, including ads which appear within games and advergames, or games built around a specific brand or product. Roughly 59 percent of that total was spent on pure in-game ads, while about 41 percent went to advergames. EMarketer forecasts that in-game advertising will surge by 120 percent by 2012, buoyed by a 133 percent surge in Web based games.

To be fair, console games are poised for a 91 percent growth spurt of their own over the next several years, but despite the growing popularity of services such as Xbox Live, a limited number of console games are played using an Internet connection, limiting the opportunity for ad placements in those games. Plus, the jury is still out on whether advertising will ever belong in certain types of games. For example, in science fiction and role-playing games, players tend to look down on the presence of corporate brands.

Source: Adweek