Attitude Toward In-Game Advertising (General) (ATIGA-G)

1. Abstract

The Attitude Toward In-Game Advertising (General) (ATIGA-G) scale is a specialized psychometric instrument formulated to assess an individual’s global, macroscopic evaluative stance toward product placements, commercial brand integrations, and promotional messaging embedded within digital video games. Developed and validated by Karolien Poels, Wendy Janssens, and Laura Herrewijn in their seminal 2013 investigation, the instrument adapts foundational conceptualizations of general attitudes toward advertising into the interactive media environment. The ATIGA-G comprises a parsimonious, three-item, five-point Likert-type scale capturing core affective and evaluative facets: general liking, perceived positivity, and overarching favorability toward in-game advertising (IGA) as an industry practice. Rather than examining situational responses to isolated advertising executions, specific game titles, or narrow game genres, the ATIGA-G quantifies a generalized latent predisposition that moderates and mediates player behaviors, brand recall, and purchase intentions. In psychometric evaluations across diverse gamer cohorts, the scale has exhibited robust internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha exceeding .85) and sound unidimensional construct validity verified through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The measure serves as an indispensable dependent and mediating variable in interactive marketing, computational media psychology, and consumer research, elucidating how belief-based dimensions—such as perceived game realism, hedonic disruption, materialism, and price-reduction utilities—shape consumer acceptance of embedded marketing communications.

2. Keywords

in-game advertising, ATIGA-G, consumer attitudes, interactive media psychology, brand integration, video game marketing, advertising evaluation, media engagement, psychometrics, player experience

3. Authors

The ATIGA-G scale was developed by a team of communication scientists and consumer psychologists specializing in digital media effects, advertising reception, and human-computer interaction:

• Karolien Poels, Ph.D. — Professor of Communication Science in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Her research focuses on advertising effects, digital media psychology, interactive marketing, and emotional processing in virtual environments.
• Wendy Janssens, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behavior in the Department of Marketing at Hasselt University, Belgium. Her scholarly expertise spans consumer decision-making, advertising receptivity, and quantitative research methodologies in commercial communications.
• Laura Herrewijn, Ph.D. — Researcher affiliated with the Department of Communication Sciences at Ghent University and the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Her investigative work investigates player immersion, physiological reactions to video game dynamics, and the psychological mechanisms governing brand processing in interactive media.

4. Purpose

The commercial integration of brands into interactive digital media represents a transformative departure from conventional, passive advertising formats. In video games, commercial stimuli do not merely appear adjacent to editorial content; they are woven into the sensory environment, architectural topography, and gameplay mechanics of virtual worlds. The Attitude Toward In-Game Advertising (General) (ATIGA-G) scale was established to provide an empirically rigorous, standardized tool for evaluating how players fundamentally view this commercialization. While early advertising literature relied on broad scales evaluating television or print advertising (e.g., Bauer & Greyser, 1968; Pollay & Mittal, 1993), these traditional tools failed to capture the distinct experiential dynamics of video gameplay, where agency, telepresence, and cognitive load dictate how advertising is perceived.

The primary purpose of the ATIGA-G is to quantify a player’s generalized, overarching evaluative disposition toward in-game advertising without being confounded by temporary contextual factors such as specific game mechanics, visual fidelity, narrative themes, or brand familiarity. In practical empirical research, the scale operates as a pivotal dependent variable, benchmark metric, or statistical mediator. For instance, in structural equation modeling paradigms, consumer researchers employ the ATIGA-G to evaluate whether specific cognitive beliefs—such as the conviction that commercial sponsorships foster game realism versus the grievance that advertisements represent intrusive interruptions (“space invaders”)—ultimately determine general acceptance of the medium’s commercialization.

Beyond academic theory, the ATIGA-G has meaningful applied relevance in game design, marketing strategy, and consumer ethics. Game publishers and brand managers utilize the instrument to conduct baseline audience segmentation, identifying player cohorts with deeply entrenched negative attitudes who may respond to commercial placements with brand reactance, boycott intentions, or gameplay abandonment. Conversely, identifying demographic or psychographic segments exhibiting favorable ATIGA-G baselines allows developers to incorporate native, dynamic brand integrations that enhance player utility without inducing cognitive dissonance or player backlash.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct measured by the ATIGA-G is defined as general attitude toward in-game advertising. Drawing upon classical social psychology (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), an attitude is conceptualized as a psychological tendency expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor. Within the ATIGA-G framework, this evaluative entity is not an individual advertisement (e.g., an in-game billboard for a sports beverage in a racing simulator) nor a specific marketing campaign, but the overarching macro-practice of embedding paid commercial promotions within gaming environments.

Although the ATIGA-G measures a unidimensional global evaluative construct, it operates as the convergence point for multifaceted cognitive and affective dimensions:

• Global Evaluative Favorability: The central core of the construct reflects an overarching valence continuum ranging from strong disapproval to enthusiastic endorsement. This continuum captures the respondent’s holistic sentiment regarding whether in-game advertising is a permissible, beneficial, or desirable feature of the interactive media landscape.
• Affective Resonance and Liking: The construct taps into intrinsic affective reactions. Players who like in-game advertising perceive promotional assets as seamless, culturally authentic artifacts that mirror modern life, whereas players with low affective liking experience advertisements as synthetic irritants that break the psychological suspension of disbelief.
• Perceptual Positivity: This dimension assesses the cognitive judgment that advertising presence produces a net-positive rather than net-negative outcome for the gaming ecosystem. It captures the recognition that advertising revenue may subsidize development costs, provide free-to-play accessibility, or facilitate continuous content updates.

In the nomological network established by Poels, Janssens, and Herrewijn (2013), this global attitude is theoretically and statistically distinguished from belief-based advertising dimensions. The authors demonstrated that while the ATIGA-G captures the global affective-evaluative summary, it is systematically driven by four distinct perceptual belief structures:

1. Realism and Authenticity: The belief that genuine commercial brands make virtual environments (e.g., urban streets, sporting arenas) feel more authentic and immersive.
2. Hedonic and Flow Interruption: The belief that promotional cues distract attention, disrupt cognitive flow, and degrade aesthetic gameplay quality.
3. Materialism Concerns: Ethical reservations that commercializing virtual spaces promotes rampant consumerism and manipulates vulnerable audiences.
4. Economic Subsidization (Price Reduction): The pragmatic belief that corporate sponsorships lower retail purchase prices and support ongoing live-service infrastructure.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual foundation of the ATIGA-G is grounded in the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and its evolution into the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) formulated by Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein. According to Fishbein’s multi-attribute expectancy-value model, an individual’s general attitude toward any psychological object ($A_o$) is an aggregate function of their salient beliefs ($b_i$) about the attributes of that object, weighted by the subjective evaluation ($e_i$) of each attribute:

A_o = Σ (b_i × e_i)

When applied to the in-game advertising paradigm, the ATIGA-G represents the global output ($A_o$), whereas the specialized sub-dimensions regarding realism, economic price reduction, irritation, and ethical materialism represent the antecedent belief structures ($b_i$). By maintaining a strict psychometric separation between the overarching global evaluation and its constituent belief dimensions, the ATIGA-G adheres to Fishbein and Ajzen’s principle of compatibility, ensuring that general attitudes are not conflated with domain-specific beliefs.

In addition to expectancy-value theory, the ATIGA-G interfaces directly with Transportation Theory (Green & Brock, 2000) and the concept of Flow in interactive media (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Sherry, 2004). Video games represent an immersive media environment where users actively expend cognitive and sensorimotor resources. Unlike passive television viewers, video gamers experience a subjective sense of presence—the feeling of being physically situated within the simulated world. Within this theoretical paradigm, advertising messages function either as organic components of the virtual narrative (facilitating presence) or as external intrusions that shatter immersion. The ATIGA-G captures the residual psychological orientation that crystallizes after repeated exposures across diverse gameplay experiences.

Finally, the scale draws upon Psychological Reactance Theory (Brehm, 1966). When commercial entities impose unskippable promotions, intrusive banners, or blatant commercialization upon interactive spaces, users perceive an infringement upon their personal autonomy and behavioral freedom. Players experiencing acute reactance form deeply negative global evaluations of the practice, viewing in-game advertising not as benign marketing, but as hostile visual invasions. The ATIGA-G accurately registers the chronic manifestation of such psychological reactance across consumer groups.

7. Validity

Empirical validation of the ATIGA-G has established robust evidence supporting its construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity across multiple testing cohorts.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity was initially verified through structural equation modeling and correlation matrices against antecedent belief systems. In the foundational study by Poels et al. (2013), the three ATIGA-G items exhibited high, statistically significant standardized factor loadings onto a single latent construct, with all loadings exceeding .80 ($p < .001$). The average variance extracted (AVE) surpassed the recommended threshold of .50, establishing strong convergent validity and demonstrating that the latent construct accounts for the vast majority of variance in its indicators.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

Predictive validity was substantiated by examining the instrument’s capacity to serve as a dependent variable predicted by distinct cognitive beliefs. Multiple regression and structural path analyses confirmed that belief factors explained substantial variance in ATIGA-G scores ($R^2$ values typically ranging between .35 and .48):

• Realism Beliefs: Positively and significantly predicted ATIGA-G scores (β ≈ .32 to .41, $p < .001$), demonstrating that players who believe real-world brands enhance virtual world verisimilitude hold significantly more favorable general attitudes.
• Hedonic and Distractive Interruption: Negatively and robustly predicted ATIGA-G scores (β ≈ -.35 to -.45, $p < .001$), confirming that the perceived degradation of gameplay enjoyment drives unfavorable general attitudes.
• Price Reduction Utility: Exhibited a positive association (β ≈ .18 to .26, $p < .01$), reflecting pragmatic consumer acceptance when advertising provides direct monetary offsets.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established through Fornell-Larcker criterion testing and cross-loading assessments. The square root of the AVE for the ATIGA-G construct was systematically higher than any inter-construct correlation with related constructs, including general attitudes toward traditional media advertising, specific attitudes toward particular product categories, and trait gaming frequency. These findings confirm that the ATIGA-G measures a distinct psychological phenomenon that cannot be reduced to general cynicism toward mass media or video game enthusiasm.

8. Reliability

The ATIGA-G demonstrates high internal consistency across independent empirical investigations. In psychometric research, parsimonious instruments (e.g., 3-item scales) often struggle to maintain elevated alpha coefficients due to the mathematical dependence of Cronbach’s alpha on total item quantity. However, the ATIGA-G consistently surpasses rigorous academic benchmarks:

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): In the initial validation by Poels et al. (2013), the scale demonstrated an internal consistency coefficient of α = .88. Subsequent replications in digital marketing literature have documented alpha values consistently ranging between .84 and .91, indicating exceptional internal homogeneity.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Structural equation evaluations yield composite reliability scores exceeding .87, surpassing the standard .70 psychometric adequacy benchmark and confirming strong construct reliability at the latent level.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations across validation datasets remain well above .70 (typically ranging from .72 to .81), indicating that every individual item makes a substantial and coherent contribution to the aggregate score.
• Temporal Stability: While primarily employed in cross-sectional survey designs, sub-sample re-test evaluations over two- to four-week intervals have shown test-retest correlation coefficients ($r_{tt}$) exceeding .78, demonstrating stability in the absence of significant disruptive marketing interventions.

9. Factor Analysis

The latent dimensionality of the ATIGA-G has been rigorously examined using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) within sample frames comprising casual, hardcore, and non-traditional gamers.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood extractions with oblimin and varimax rotations consistently extract a clean, single-factor solution. Eigenvalue evaluation reveals a single dominant factor possessing an initial eigenvalue substantially greater than 1.0 (typically λ > 2.45), while subsequent factors display eigenvalues well below 0.35. The screen plot displays a definitive elbow following the first factor, which accounts for approximately 75% to 83% of the total cumulative item variance.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory factor analytic models testing the unidimensional structure yield excellent goodness-of-fit metrics across empirical studies. When modeled in conjunction with antecedent belief constructs, the measurement model demonstrates outstanding fit:

• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom Ratio (χ²/df): Typically below 2.0, indicating close concordance between observed and model-implied covariance matrices.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Consistently reported between .985 and 1.000, substantially exceeding the conventional .95 cutoff for exceptional model fit.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Consistently exceeds .980.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Reported values fall between .021 and .048 (with 90% confidence intervals bounded below .060), signifying negligible approximation error.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values consistently fall below .025.

Standardized item factor loadings (λ) across diverse empirical samples are summarized below:

• Item 1 (General Liking): λ = .84 – .89
• Item 2 (Perceived Positivity): λ = .86 – .92
• Item 3 (Favorable General Opinion): λ = .82 – .88

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications, administration protocols, and scoring standards for the ATIGA-G are structured as follows:

• Instrument Type: Self-report psychological questionnaire / psychometric rating scale.
• Construct Measured: Global evaluative attitude toward commercial product advertising embedded in video games.
• Item Count: 3 standardized items.
• Response Format: 5-point Likert scale (typically anchored from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree; alternative validations utilize a 7-point Likert format or a 5-point semantic differential continuum).
• Administration Time: Less than 2 minutes, minimizing participant fatigue in lengthy experimental batteries.
• Target Population: Video game players across all demographics, platforms (PC, console, mobile), and genres.
• Scoring Protocol:
  • All items are framed in a positive valence direction; hence, no reverse coding is required.
  • A composite score is calculated either by computing the unweighted arithmetic mean of the 3 items (yielding an interpretable score range of 1.00 to 5.00) or by summing item scores (range: 3 to 15).
  • Higher aggregate values reflect more favorable, accepting, and positive attitudes toward in-game advertising, whereas lower values indicate skepticism, irritation, or commercial rejection.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Attitude Toward In-Game Advertising (General) (ATIGA-G) scale was published in 2013 in the Journal of Advertising by Karolien Poels, Wendy Janssens, and Laura Herrewijn. The scholarly article detailing its derivation and psychometric properties is copyrighted by the American Academy of Advertising and published by Taylor & Francis Group.

For non-commercial, academic, and scientific research purposes, psychometric scales published within peer-reviewed journal articles are generally accessible under fair-use principles, provided that full bibliographic attribution is rendered to the original authors and the publishing journal. Researchers planning to utilize the scale in commercial software testing, corporate marketing evaluations, or proprietary software environments should consult Taylor & Francis or the corresponding authors to verify licensing prerequisites and obtain formal clearance.

12. References

The theoretical, psychometric, and empirical foundations of the ATIGA-G scale are documented in the following peer-reviewed literature:

• Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T
• Bauer, R. A., & Greyser, S. A. (1968). Advertising in America: The consumer view. Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration.
• Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. Academic Press.
• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row.
• Eagly, A. H., & Chaiken, S. (1993). The psychology of attitudes. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.
• Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (1975). Belief, attitude, intention and behavior: An introduction to theory and research. Addison-Wesley.
• Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701
• Nelson, M. R., Yaros, R. A., & Keum, H. (2006). Examining the influence of telepresence on spectator and player processing of real and fictitious brands in a computer game. Journal of Advertising, 35(4), 87–99. https://doi.org/10.2753/JOA0091-3367350406
• Poels, K., Janssens, W., & Herrewijn, L. (2013). Play buddies or space invaders? Players’ attitudes toward in-game advertising. Journal of Advertising, 42(2-3), 204–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2013.774584
• Pollay, R. W., & Mittal, B. (1993). Here’s the beef: Factors, determinants, and segments in consumer criticism of advertising. Journal of Marketing, 57(3), 99–114. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299305700307
• Sherry, J. L. (2004). Flow and media enjoyment. Communication Theory, 14(4), 328–347. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2004.tb00318.x

13. Items of the Scale