Playable marketing is a game a brand commissions to reach a business goal, such as a launch, new customers, loyalty or sales, so that play is the campaign. It can run in a browser, an app, Roblox, Fortnite or a physical space. This guide covers what counts, why brands use it and seven sourced examples.
People also search for this as advergames, branded games or gamified marketing. This page draws on The Well Played Awards, an open library of 1,089 campaign games from 704 brands and 736 agencies, dated from 1996 to 2026. Every game in it has a documented brief and solution, and 517 (47%) also have a results block taken from case studies, trade press and award entries. The seven examples below run from 2006 to 2025, from browser games to Roblox and GTA; each has a result we could trace to a page we opened. No placement on this site is paid.
What counts as playable marketing?
It counts when:
- A brand commissioned it as part of a campaign, not as a standalone entertainment product.
- It has a business objective, such as a launch, awareness, loyalty, sales or recruiting.
- It has a real game mechanic: rules, a goal and an outcome the player affects.
- Physical play has participation, a payoff and a digital layer. Installations, event games and touchscreens count when people take part and leave with a marketing outcome, such as a prize, a promo code or a place on a leaderboard.
- Light formats count too. A branded quiz, spin-the-wheel, scratch card, instant win, loot box or advent calendar with games belongs here when a brand commissioned it for a marketing task and the player acts in it.
It doesn't count when:
- It is a WebGL or tech demo with no campaign behind it.
- It is a catalogue or portal of games made for fun.
- It is a configurator or generator with no game mechanic, or a virtual tour you only click around.
- It is an AR mask or filter with no score, or a set of achievement badges on its own.
- It is a video or landing page where the visitor does nothing, or an installation people only look at.
Paid media inside someone else's game is a separate format too; we compare them in advergames vs in-game advertising.
What do brands use playable marketing for?
Games in the library are tagged with the main objective of their brief:
Six more games have no objective tag yet. Engagement covers just under half of the library, but the tag records the brief, not the ceiling: three engagement-tagged games below, Take Home The Fun, Worldwide Hide and Rescue Squad, report purchases or sales.
Most run in a browser (659 web games), followed by 141 apps, 107 games inside other games and 76 installations. The most common mechanic is arcade & action (257), then adventure & quest (162) and racing & sports (145).
Seven playable marketing examples
Oldest first. For a longer list of thirteen cases with their results, see our playable marketing examples.
Axelab — Axe (2006)
Agency: BBH New York with The Barbarian Group · Mechanic: Simulation & strategy · Platform: Web
To launch a new fine fragrance, Axe cast site visitors as lab researchers. The player turned a dial that dosed a female "test subject" with the scent and watched her reaction change: too little and she barely responded, too much and she tipped into a comic overdose. The task was to find the exact dose for the "correct" reaction.
Result: according to the campaign's Communication Arts entry, Axelab went from sketch to the number-one-selling men's fragrance at Walmart during the launch (Communication Arts).
Game Time — Chevrolet (2012)
Agency: Goodby Silverstein & Partners · Mechanic: Quiz & trivia · Platform: App
Chevrolet had bought heavy airtime in Super Bowl XLVI and did not want viewers drifting to their phones during the breaks, so it put the game on the phone. Players downloaded a free app, registered and got a personal licence plate. Each time a Chevy commercial aired, the app asked a trivia question about it, alongside polls on the match; right answers entered players into prize draws, and anyone who spotted their own plate on a car in a Chevy ad won that car (mobiForge).
Result: its 2012 Cannes Gold Lion announcement reports more than 703,000 registrations and nearly 1.6 million hours spent in the app (PR Newswire). Detroit Labs, which built the app, says over 70% of users reported a stronger connection with Chevy (Detroit Labs).
Light Up Car Curling — Hyundai (2018)
Agency: INNOCEAN WORLDWIDE · Mechanic: Simulation & strategy · Platform: Installation
During the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Hyundai painted a curling target just before the stop line of a real four-lane crossing in South Korea and broadcast it live. Players picked a lane; if the car in that lane stopped at the line when the light turned red, they won a point, and points were converted into donations to Korea's Paralympic curling team.
Result: 1,835,480 participants, 2,008,648 views and KRW 99,698,100 donated; stop-line compliance at the crossing rose from 73% on 1 February to 92% on 18 February 2018 (Spikes Asia).
Take Home The Fun — M&M's (2019)
Agency: Chaos Theory Games with Traffik · Mechanic: Arcade & action · Platform: AR & VR
Australian players pointed a phone at a table or the floor and an M&M's piñata appeared in augmented reality. They tapped it until it burst, then moved on to the next. Once the free attempts ran out, more rounds needed the barcode from a real pack and the receipt. Every hit counted towards a shared leaderboard, and the top players split a prize pool.
Result: over the six-week campaign, 12,000 game sessions, 49,000 piñatas broken and 6,600 product barcodes redeemed in the app (Chaos Theory Games).
Worldwide Hide — Cadbury (2022)
Agency: VCCP · Mechanic: Adventure & quest · Platform: Web
A player chose a place on the map that meant something to them and someone else, dropped into Google Street View there, hid a giant virtual Cadbury egg and sent the other person a clue. The recipient then had to find the same spot. Instead of the free hunt, players could buy a real egg for the platform to send. The 2022 edition followed a 2021 debut and added a Manchester United egg (VCCP).
Result: the 2021 debut drew 2.26 million site visits globally, 1.78 million of them in the UK, and 14,500 Easter eggs were bought through it (WARC).
Oatmilk Cosmic Race — Chobani (2022)
Agency: Thinkingbox with Chobani Creative · Mechanic: Racing & sports · Platform: In-game
Chobani opened its first Roblox experience in June 2022 to promote its oat milk (PR Newswire). Players picked a Cosmic Oat Racer and flew a multi-route track through space, delivering oat milk to as many planets as they could. Points from each finished race bought Chobani merchandise for their avatar and filled a shared charity meter: once players reached the target, Chobani would donate $75,000 to Hunger Free America.
Result: according to Thinkingbox, more than 5,000 plays in the first two weeks, with an average session of five minutes (Thinkingbox). The agency does not say whether players reached the donation target.
Rescue Squad — Jeep (2025)
Agency: Publicis Middle East · Mechanic: Arcade & action · Platform: In-game
In Saudi Arabia, Jeep ran a roadside rescue service inside GTA. A player stuck in mud, wrecked or stranded off-road typed a command in chat or pressed F4, and a convoy of Rescue Squad Jeeps, driven by one of 13 Saudi streamers, pulled them out live on stream. Off air, an always-on server answered the same calls. Between rescues, players could browse an in-game Jeep showroom and book a real test drive.
Result: according to its award entry, 155,000 livestream views and 327 live rescues; test-drive bookings rose 9.6% in October and another 34.9% in November, and sales rose 41%, all against the pre-campaign period (The Drum).
How do brands measure playable marketing?
Of the 1,089 games in the library, 517 publish a results block. We sorted those statements by keywords, such as "plays" or "visits" for participation and "redeemed" or "voucher" for redemption. A statement can land in several groups, and the method is a first pass, not a manual audit; the full breakdown is in our playable marketing statistics.
- Participation. 408 of the 517 (79%) count players, plays, sessions, visits, entries or downloads. Worldwide Hide's debut logged 2.26 million site visits.
- Reach. 165 (32%) report impressions, views, press coverage or social numbers. Light Up Car Curling counted 2,008,648 views.
- Attention. 146 (28%) report time spent, 128 of them as an average or a rate per session, visit or player. Oatmilk Cosmic Race averaged five minutes a session, by its agency's count.
- Data. 73 (14%) report sign-ups, registrations, leads or applications. Chevrolet's Game Time logged more than 703,000 registrations.
- Redemption. 23 (4%) report codes, coupons or vouchers redeemed, which tie play to a purchase. M&M's counted 6,600 product barcodes redeemed in its app.
- Sales. 87 (17%) mention sales, orders, purchases or conversions. Counting redemption too, 98 games mention sales or redemption, 9% of the library. Axelab's Communication Arts entry credits it with becoming the number-one-selling men's fragrance at Walmart.
- Brand lift. 16 (3%) report a brand metric such as awareness, recall, consideration or perception, the smallest group.
- Behaviour. Results can also track what people did away from the screen. At Hyundai's crossing, stop-line compliance rose from 73% to 92%.
When is a game the right tool?
The strongest examples build the business action into the loop. M&M's made a pack barcode the price of another round, Cadbury put a real egg next to the free hunt, and Chevrolet asked its trivia questions about its own commercials, so playing meant watching the ads it had paid for. Jeep went where its audience already played instead of asking it to visit a microsite, offered test-drive booking between rescues and reported test drives and sales against a pre-campaign baseline, not just views.
A game is the wrong tool when there is no budget or channel to bring people to it, when the brief needs repeat contact but the game gives no reason to return, or when the audience is tightly regulated, as with children or prescription medicines. A custom-built game is also the wrong choice when the brief needs only quick data capture: a light format such as a branded quiz or instant win does that faster and cheaper. Choose the goal and the measure you will report first, then the mechanic.
FAQ
What is an advergame or branded game?
Advergame is the older word for a game built for a brand's marketing; it appeared around 2000, when most of them ran in a browser. Branded game is the everyday term. Playable marketing is the wider label, adding brand worlds in Roblox and Fortnite, apps and live events. We trace how the words and formats changed in our history of advergames.
Are branded games effective?
They can be, and the strongest proof is a change in what people do, not a play count. At the crossing in Hyundai's Light Up Car Curling, stop-line compliance rose from 73% to 92% in February 2018. For how many games publish results and what they measure, see our playable marketing statistics.
Why do brands make games?
Mostly for engagement and awareness: in our library, 534 of 1,089 games are briefed for engagement and 281 for awareness, followed by product launches (125), sales (66), lead generation and recruiting (32) and loyalty (22). A game asks people to act, so it can carry a product idea, a reason to buy or a sign-up. Chevrolet's Super Bowl app Game Time logged more than 703,000 registrations.
What is the difference between playable marketing and playable ads?
A playable ad is an ad unit: a short interactive demo in a paid slot. Meta describes playable ads as letting people preview a mobile app before downloading it (Meta for Developers), and Google bills them per engagement in App campaigns (Google Ads Help). Playable marketing is any game a brand commissions for a marketing goal. They overlap when a brand builds its own game into the format, as Oreo did with a Facebook playable ad in 2019. More in advergames vs in-game advertising.
Browse all 1,089 games by objective, industry, mechanic and platform, start with games that launched a product, loyalty games or brands inside other games, and send us a link to a game that belongs here.