Advergames Aiming Children in Turkey: A Content Analysis of 65 Advergames

The purpose of this study is to examine advergame practices of top performing companies targeting children and operating in Turkey. Top 500 leading companies operating in Turkey was determined. Among them, websites of the companies targeting children were analysed and the prevalence of advergames integrated in the Websites of these companies was evaluated by conducting content analysis according to the determined features from an extensive literature review. Among top 500 leading companies, only 10 companies, which are all operating in the food-beverage industry, integrated a total of 84 advergames on their Web sites. However, only 65 advergames of 8 companies were reached in the coding process. The results demonstrated that the companies operating in Turkey do not use advergames extensively and these games are lack of many features of advergames. A content analysis of advergames has not yet been conducted in Turkey. By introducing Persuasion Knowledge Model and the model of Processing of Commercial Media Content, the present paper provided a different approach for evaluating the effects of various features of advergames on children.