Advergaming is the practice of using video games to advertise a product, organization or viewpoint. It’s always a challenge for advertisers to get consumers not to ignore their advertising but for some, that’s taking a turn for the better with advergaming. Mobile advergaming is gathering pace with more advertisers opting to include it in their brand campaigns.

• ATL advergaming: At first a company provides interactive games on its website in the hope that potential customers will be drawn to the game and spend more time on the website, or simply become more product aware. The games themselves usually feature the company's products prominently.

• BTL advergaming: BTL advergame technique consists of advertising within a game itself. Since the intent of in-game advertising is commercial rather than political, some consider such advertisements to make up a category of their own. However as with the above mentioned BTL advergame forms, it is the techique by which the propaganda is purveyed rather than the nature of its intended audience which defines in-game advertising as a subset of BTL advergaming and not its own category.

• TTL advergaming: A rare form of advergaming, TTL advergames involve the use of URL hyperlinks within the game designed to induce the player to visit a webpage which then contains BTL advertisements. The technique used to tempt the player into visiting the intended URL varies from game to game.

Tryvertising, which is all about consumers becoming familiar with new products by actually trying them out. Think of Tryvertising as a new breed of product placement, in the real world, integrating goods and services into daily life in a relevant way, so that consumers can make up their minds based on their experience, not messages.

Think 'obvious' activities like handing out product samples, and more subtle, integrated product placements that are part of an experience or solution. Product placements that become part of the landscape, part of the real world where consumers hang out and certainly don't mind trying something as long as it makes sense to them.

NEW BREED OF TRY-OUT STORES

A new breed of try-out stores popping up around the world. They differ from experience and lifestyle stores (think Apple, Nike, Prada) in that they try to mirror consumers' domestic settings. Even though they don't fully fit the TRYVERTISING bill, since consumers actually have to go to these stores instead of the store and try-out products coming to them, they do explore interesting 'post-advertising' models. Check out the following spottings from the world of cooking, cleaning and bathing.

Buzz marketing is a viral marketing technique that attempts to make each encounter with a consumer appear to be a unique, spontaneous personal exchange of information instead of a calculated marketing pitch choreographed by a professional advertiser. Historically, buzz marketing campaigns have been designed to be very theatrical in nature. The advertiser reveals information about the product or service to only a few "knowing" people in the target audience. By purposely seeking out on-on-one conversations with those who heavily influence their peers, buzz marketers create a sophisticated word-of-mouth campaign where consumers are flattered to be included in the elite group of those "in the know" and willingly spread the word to their friends and colleagues. Although buzz marketing is not new, Internet technology has changed the way it's being used. Buzz campaigns are now being initiated in chat rooms, where marketing representatives assume an identity appropriate to their target audience and pitch their product. Personal Web logs (blogs) are another popular media for electronic buzz marketing campaigns; advertisers seek out authors of the "right kind of blog" and trade product or currency for promotion. Instant messaging (IM) applications are also being looked at as a vehicle for carrying out buzz marketing campaigns with either humans or IM bots doing the pitching. As with all buzz campaigns, the power of the IM model relies on the influence an individual has in an established small network -- in this case, his buddy list. As technology continues to facilitate the delivery of a electronic buzz marketing message easier, and software applications make message deliveries easier to quantify, some advertising experts predict that electronic buzz marketing techniques will become a standard component in all cross-media advertising campaigns. Others warn that abuse of this potentially powerful electronic marketing technique will be its downfall.