Leveraging Bidstack’s in-game advertising technology, BAFTA nominated Codemasters’ title, DiRT Rally 2.0 are one a handful of titles to display coronavirus safety advice to gamers around the world.
Government messaging urging the public to stay at home will start appearing in some of the UK’s most popular video games as people are urged to stay indoors despite rising temperatures.
UK gaming companies are using geotargeting technology to push the messages out to players based in the UK, replicating the Government’s existing adverts across TV, social media, print and billboards.
Posters and banners bearing the slogan ‘Stay At Home, Save Lives’ alongside a coronavirus icon have been inserted into Codemasters’ DiRT Rally 2.0 racing game for PlayStation, Xbox and Windows, lining driving routes throughout the game.
Other titles include Candy Crush Saga, Sniper Elite 4 and Farm Heroes Saga, which also display the messaging on landing pages and banners to millions of players.
Activision Blizzard, which owns cross-platform puzzler Candy Crush Saga, has also donated more than 230 ‘digital poster’ advertising boards in London to display government health messages.
Toby Evan-Jones, vice president of Business Development at Codemasters said it had been “fantastic” to see conversations about the messaging within the gaming community. “We came to realise that technology within our games, which enables the remote updating of banners within the virtual environment, could be repurposed to assist with the coronavirus communication effort,” he said. This week, through collaboration with Bidstack Group PLC (providers of the ad-replacement infrastructure), we began delivering a version of Public Health England’s “Stay Home Save Lives” message into DiRT Rally 2.0″
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