In Game Ads May Just Not Work 119
GigaGamez is reporting that the humorously-named Bunnyfoot research company (which specializes in behavior studies), has found that in-game ads just don't work. Some games which featured semi-stationary areas (like NBA Live) ended up with ads sticking in the minds of players. Games like Project Gotham Racing 3 ended up with the players having a 0% retention rate for ads that whizzed past. From the press release: "These results demonstrate a significantly poor level of engagement with consumers and exposed an apparent weakness within games to efficiently capture consumer attention. Despite following the model of real world sports advertising, current methods are not optimizing consumer engagement and are failing to influence the consumer in any significant way, the key driver for any marketing campaign and its validation. 'These results reflect the industry's concern relating to brand value and return on investment. Understanding consumer interaction at a deeper level of analysis allows us to measure the value of advertising investment' said Alison Walton, Head of Visual Engagement."
Who would have thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
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All you've really said is that the advertising guys were stupid to insert ads into unsuitable games.
The Sims is a perfect example of a game where advertising works, because you are thinking about a new pair of sneakers or getting a sandwich. There is room for advertising in-game and I would ha
Re:Who would have thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Not even a little.
As long as I PAY FOR the goddamned game, the advertisers will accomplish nothing but pissing me off by trying to advertise to me in-game.
When they start giving the games away, my opinion on the matter may change (though if my stance on ad-funded television means anything, I just won't play those games). But I do not pay to watch ads.
Pay up front, or watch ads. Make me do both, and you've lost a customer.
Re:Who would have thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not to make you go out and buy something, because that depends on a whole host of factors that they know damn well they can't control. Are you hungry? Do you even need shoes? Do you own an HDTV? They know that, for the most part, and delivery food ads are the exception here, you're not going to drop what you're doing and lunge out to buy their product.
What they want is to build up and reinforce this idea in your head, so that when you do need shoes or an HDtv or something, and you go to the store, you have a positive bias toward their product because it seems "familiar" to you. So it made sense for them to put ads in games, because they believed that you would subconsciously notice the ad and that subconscious recognition would reinforce that positive bias.
What seems to be happening however, and what they didn't count on, is that the games require so much focus that you're not aware of the ad, even on a subconscious level, so they're getting crap return for their advertising dollar.
Re:Who would have thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you pay to watch movies? Do you pay for cable/satellite TV? Hell, have you ever paid for a newspaper or magazine?
If you do any of these things, you do indeed pay to watch ads. Wherever there is concentrated public attention combined with greed, advertising will find a way. Movies include ads both at the beginning, and included throughout the feature in the form of product placement. Some movies are even produced so cynically that the entire film can even be thought of as an ad for a product line primarily, and a film secondarily (Spiderman, for example).
Pay-TV does the same thing. While you may not be exposed to "after these messages"-type ads, there are definitely large amounts of advertising dollars and interests having their way with your HBO Original Series. What brand of cars do they drive? Why do Cisco-brand routers happen to save the day from the hacker attack?
Advertising does not always come in the form of 30-second TV spots or banner ads. Much of the most valuable advertising is subtle enough that it usually isn't identified as advertising. A glowing product review on a web site, a movie star seen using a certain brand of cell phone, a story on your local news station about a new video game system...
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Not since several years. And when I did, I arrived late precisely for this reason.
I don't watch TV on my own. If I do watch something, it amounts to less than half an hour a week, if somebody tells me about something interesting happening. And that's usually a part of some program, and most of the time I leave before ads begin.
Not since several years.
I'm getting a lot more things done since I st
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How late do you arrive to avoid the paid product placement in movies? Because, if you don't miss that, you haven't missed the ads.
Same question as preceding. As the GP noted, ads don't come only in the form of 30-second spots.
mplayer lets you skip over the pai
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Sure you can skip past the previews in a movie, but some of the highest-priced ads are actually located in the movie itself. You can get your information from free websites, but odds are, a lot of that information is slanted and influenced
MMO (Score:2)
You paid for a disc, a license to use the game software, and the shipping of the disc and proof of license to your door. The advertisers are paying for the servers, server software, and bandwidth through which your computer communicates with those of other players.
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Sorry, I don't play the "only bought a license, but we'll make you repay 100% of the licensing fee for replacement media" semantics game. Nor, for that matter, does anyone else. I say, without hesitation or shame, that I BUY, not "license", such things. If you want to use the RIAA's doublespeak, have a ball; but don't expect me to go along for the ride.
When I buy a CD, I BUY a CD and the right (even if only ethically, not legally) to do just abo
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How about the advertisers are paying for the bandwidth and servers, but you are paying for maintenance of the server software and enforcement of rules against griefers who would ruin your experience? Or vice versa: in cable TV, the advertisers pay for the shows, but you pay for getting them to your TV.
Re:Who would have thought... (Score:4, Insightful)
As some games get more realistic and they try ever harder to portray a true-to-life atmosphere, they need to include more elements of the real world. If fake ads or no ads work better for your game, like in Duke Nukem, then terrific. But if you're trying to portray a realistic view of many major cities, like many driving games do, or you're trying to portray the realistic environment of a pro sports stadium, real advertising on real billboards is going to be crucial to the atmosphere. I personally never played the GTA games, but my guess is the same goes there.
Gratuitous advertising where the game creator just wants to rake in a few bucks is another story. Unless the game is ad-supported, like the US Army game which is completely free, but is essentially an infomercial for the Army, I see it as double-dipping the consumer. It would be like HBO all of a sudden putting ads in The Sopranos. It angers me that the game manufacturer would charge $60 for entertainment, but then put content in the game that is not only not entertaining, but actually annoying. It's like a friend inviting you to dinner and then pushing Amway. It's disrespectful.
I hated it when BF2 made me click through ads for expansion packs to get to the game. Yeah, I get the "informative" argument, but does that justify the ad showing up every time I play, adding one more step to an already tedious start-up procedure? It doesn't add atmosphere, it doesn't increase my enjoyment of the game, and BF2 costs the same as any other popular game so I'm not getting a break on the price. Furthermore, I had no clue when I purchased the game that this would be the case. When I watch broadcast TV or pick up a paper, at least I know ahead of time what the rules of the road are going to be. Here it was just a grab on my time.
As I mentioned before, it's all about respect. If the game manufacturers respect us, then they'll put ads where it's important for atmosphere and they'll avoid them where it's not. If they continue to try to annoy us and then continue to try to justify lining they're pockets by whining, "but games are so expensive to make!" I say fucke 'em.
TW
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TW
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For me, one of the major benefits of playing a sports game on the computer rather than watching it on TV or going to the stadium is that I don't have to put up with the advertisements. I mean, do people really want a realistic environment when they play sports games? How many people stop playing for 3 minutes every so often to go watch an advertisem
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Please tell me where I can order delivery franks. That would be just too awesome for words.
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Your hot dog and bathroom examples notwithstanding, people do appear to be asking for a more realistic environment. I was kinda surprised to see real players' faces in next-gen football, basketball and boxing games, but people seem to be snapping them up.
"If people don't want to have other negatives of the stadium experience, why would anyone expect us to have the advertising of the real stadium?"
I really don't agree with
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I think it's great when they show generic things. Often times you see a derivative of a real-life product and notice nothing out of place, but at least if you DO notice it, you don't feel distracted by the idea of someone trying to influence you and you don't just get distracted by seeing the product prominently placed, it just blends into the backgroun
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I don't know if you were just poking fun at the Subway add in HL with that comment or not. But, I think if done right adds in a game could work. What if you are wandering through some french town seeing an old style add for Coca-Cola with a french theme painted on the side of a bldg with maybe a few holes knocked into it might be realistic enough that it would make some people think of grabbing a c
Re:Who would have thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
Computer games and the web are much more active, intellectual media - you're constantly deciding where you want to go and what you want to do, and a large part of successful game playing/web browsing consists of quickly and efficiently identifying the useful information presented to you, isolating it from the irrelevant information and ignoring the rest - the computer game or website is a method to achieve the object of the exercise, not the object of the exercise itself. And (as we all know), anything that interrupts you in your pursuit of an aim doesn't persuade you so much as irritate the living shit out of you.
TV advertising is aimed at people who are sitting there waiting to be told things.
In-game and online advertising is aimed at people who already know exactly where they want to go and what they want to do, and unless it's an essential part of their activity your advertising can and will be ignored and discarded as fast as the user can humanly process it.
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I wouldn't classify the web as being intellectual. hehe I've killed more brain cells on some sites than all my years of drinking beer. =P
Cheers,
Fozzy
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Are you sure?
Didn't those old subliminal adds in movie theaters that got banned that just flashed pictures of coke and popcorn get banned because they were too effective almost like commands.
I think your mind would process out most stuff like you said, but it its something that you might be thinking of anyway, an add in game might trigger something in you even if it is almost immediately processed out. It would have to be done correctly, but ...
Going back to my previous post, if its been a long
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It was first tried out in movie theatres, and on the strength of purely anecdotal evidence it was promptly banned in movies, TV, pretty much everywhere.
Non-subliminal advertising (liminal advertising?) works very well - billboards and the like can and do have a long-term effect.
However, one of the most striking differences I see between people "at home" on the net and
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What's amazing is it seems that they haven't yet had that d'oh!!! moment.
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And thats just the thing. Of COURSE traditional sports advertising didn't work! They were measuring the wrong targets response. I wonder how effective ads in a stadium are for the pro athletes since that would be the accurate comparison. Here's a hint to marketers...when we're focusing on playing the game, we ignore passive ads on the sidelines and billboards. If you make your ads more intrusive t
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The human brain is a very powerful pattern recogn
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I don't want to think about buying sneakers or eating a sandwich, no matter what I'm doing. People don't watch TV because they're hungry or they want to go shopping (exception might be the Super Bowl ads and the Home Shopping channel). They don't drive their cars to look at billboards (unless there's something news worth [blogs.com] about one). And they don't go to the cinema to sit through 20 mins of ads (though, I love seeing the pre-views
Make the ads a game themselves! (Score:1)
Re:Make the ads a game themselves! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, considering how crappy Burger King breakfast is, they're probably outselling hotcakes by a wide margin.
Ads and games are not new at all. (Score:2)
IIRC the amiga game Zool [wikipedia.org] was sponsored by Chupa Chupps, having the first levels 'candy-themed' and it worked nicely.
Supercars II (top-view driving sim with homing missiles) was also sponsored... by a local driving school in the UK :)
It was obvious then that these ads had about 0 impact on the player, it should still be obvious now.
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What you gon' do with all that junk?
All that junk inside your trunk?
I'ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my Chupp
My Chupp, my Chupp, my Chupp, my Chupp, my Chupp
My Chupp, my Chupp, my Chupp, my lovely Chupa Chupp
Re:Ads and games are not new at all. (Score:5, Interesting)
mnb Re:Ads and games are not new at all. (Score:1, Informative)
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Ever heard of Sneak King [xbox.com]?
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This has already been done. Remember "Cool Spot," which was basically a platformer for Virgin drinks
Virgin was the company that made the game; the drink was 7-Up.
The great thing about Cool Spot was it was a really fun game, with solid gameplay and production values, even though it was centered around the 7-Up brand and mascot. I don't know how well it actually worked as an advertisement, but it's still among my favorite Genesis games. But meanwhile, who remembers Mick and Mack? If you take a crappy game and slap some brand logos on it, you'll just be forgotten, or ridiculed at best.
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It sure worked on YOU!
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what a sad story.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Value of advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
What about, let's say, increasing the quality, or, if that's too hard, reduce the price by exactly the amount wasted on marketing? The price reduction would get you way under the price of competition and thus the company would have the same sales without ads. Same sales, same profits, just with the customer more happy.
On the bright side... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, if you think about your comment for a moment, the idea that an advertisement costs the consumer twice is illogical. If the advertisements are avoided (and precious brainpower is consumed to NOT buy the product being marketed), the costs incurred by the marketing department AREN'T passed on to the consumer (who doesn't buy the product after all). If the consumer does buy the product, it's unlikely s/he spent a great deal of time avoiding the ad.
Furthermore, I'd like to point out that advertisements aren't inherently good or bad. It's entirely possible that an advertisement made a consumer aware of a product that a producer was producing. It's possible that said consumer now enjoys a greater economic utility per dollar than with whatever alternative s/he was using prior to seeing the advertisement.
Finally, (and I think we
Re:On the bright side... (Score:5, Insightful)
So although the production costs are offset by the advertsing revenue, the saving is not passed directly on to the purchaser. Except to say that the availability of the game is perhaps made possible by the offset in prduction costs.
Advertisers will want to advertise in the the already successful franchise games such as the aforementioned PGR. How much different the game do you think the would be in both polish and price if it carried zero paid for advertising compared to whatever revenue it can generate through in-game ads? I would say zero.
Ergo, in-game advertising is a cost borne by the purchaser by having to experience them, not so bad in PGR but I find them quite annnoying in other games.
Re:On the bright side... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, silly me, I'll just ask Valve and EA for some money back from CS:S and BF2142 because since they just stuck ads in there, I should be saving some money right?
Don't be so naive. The companies see it as an additional revenue stream, not as a way to pass on savings to the customers.
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look again (Score:2)
Re:Value of advertising-indeed (Score:2)
all things considered, has this paid for advertising garnered them a single sale? will it?
supply & demand are tied right now- and I believe they would be without the advertising..
Until there is one sitting on a shelf unwanted, why pay for airtime?
talk about wasting advertising dollars.
BRB (Score:5, Funny)
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Hunter: "Oh man, you're so dead. Right in my crosshairs!"
Prey: "Oh shit!"
Hunter: "OOH! Mountain Dew... Hmm... After this round, I think I'll go grab one from the fridge." **blam**
The ad DID help increase the 'need' for the product, just like ads are supposed to do. Nobody sees a Mountain Dew ad on TV and immediately rushes to the store for that and only that. They put it on their list and get it later. Or the
Well, duh. (Score:2, Insightful)
Real motorsport doesn't just have trackside adverts, but sponsorship on the cars, too. If the rear bumper of the opposition has a big Bosconian logo like in Ridge 6, I'm rather more likely to notice it when trying to get past him.
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Trackside adverts are not there for those driving the cars (like you are doing while playing) but for those people beside the track watching the race.
Those people are not constantly engaged because there are always those moments when you are waiting for the race to start or waiting for the next car to appear. And that's when you have time to look (consciously or not) at the adverts.
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I was looking for a more compelling reason than: I like to watch sometimes
Pilots (Score:1)
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Please, please, don't give them any free ideas. I'd rather have them pay for those in marketing research, at least then I can be spared the advertisements that are intrusive and effective for a few years.
I've personally passed my saturation point on advertising and I've become e
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Not that you need any; while they got a 0% recognition for the trackside advertising, I can certainly tell you that the F50 GT I was driving is sold by Ferrari.
Subconscious (Score:2)
If it works for movies, why not games?
Bullshit! (Score:2, Funny)
Know what? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Sure About That? (Score:3, Interesting)
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So... (Score:2)
don't mind them till ... (Score:2, Insightful)
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I was quite content with internet advertising when the ads were just static banners or even bold images. Then they became intrusive, noisy and distracting so now I have an ad-blocking solution which eliminates almost all advertising
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Oh, have no doubt, they will eventually become as intrusive as TV. We already have forced advertising on DVDs that you paid for and it's only a matter of time before games become just like that format. The idea is to do a slo
Would a publisher put ads in a novel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would a book publisher seriously consider adding in some full page adds in the middle of a novel? Of course not, so why do they think they can get away with it games?
I'll happily pay the extra $1-2 per unit for a game that isn't offered at a lower price without ads.
Whereas I will not even consider purchasing a game with ingame ads for real world products.
And I doubt this is a matter of publishers not being able to finance their games and make a reasonable profit. This is a matter of publishers being greedy, and I hope customers will make them pay for their greed by refusing to purchase products in which they introduce this crap.
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This is a lame comparison.
Comercial products are *mentioned* in books often (although most writers arent paid for this), and that would be the real comparison.
Pages of ads in a book would be comparable to popups in a racing game, i.e. distraction.
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Here's the link to the article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/business/media/ 1 2book.html?ex=1307764800en=89d58b622aa65b7dei=50 [nytimes.com]
Re:Would a publisher put ads in a novel? (Score:5, Informative)
They already have (Score:2)
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The reason they are considering it is because they see "mind share" leaving television and movies for video games, a trend that will likely continue. The advertisers want to place their advertising anywhere that has the most viewers/participants. They are willing to pay game studios money to put the ads in the games, and the game studios have a
ads in games (Score:1)
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No pics in link, but I'm sure you know my friend Google [google.com]...
Not the whole story.. depends on the game.... (Score:2)
Of course this study picks the worst games to do it, I would really like to see a study d
You know something is wrong when... (Score:1)
People are starting to get used to something that annoyed them in the first place (making them jump ship).
What's next? ads in your dreams (to make them more realistic?)
To quote Futurama:
Wrong approach (Score:2)
These results demonstrate a significantly poor level of engagement with consumers and exposed [...] Understanding consumer interaction at a deeper level of analysis allows us to measure the value of advertising investment
Nope, these results demonstrate a total lack your understanding of a very simple consumer preference: Fuck off and stuff your advertisement where the sun don't shine.
The whole quote is a longwinded marketing-droid newspeak for "we don't yet know how to force ourselves on these people who don't want to see our stuff".
I sincerely hope the piracy scene will rise to the challenge. A few years from now, you will have two jobs: Removing the copy protection and removing the ads.
Explanation is in the excerpt (Score:5, Insightful)
There is the problem. Sports advertising is targeted at spectators, not athletes. For the most part, games don't HAVE spectators. I don't see how advertising can work when the target is in an active, task oriented, state as oposed to a passive observer state.
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If I had mod-points, you would get +1 Insightful, sir.
Aikon-
Real world ads target spectators, not players (Score:1)
That's because real world sports advertising targets the spectators, not the competitors. Spectators have time to look around when the action on the track/field/pitch is slow. Competitors are busy all the time.
"Need For Speed: Spectator Edition" - coming soon to Xbox360, PS3 and Wii (hotdogs sold separately).
the model of real world sports advertising (Score:2)
Advertising for basketball stars? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ask the players of a NBA game if they can remember what the adds around the bleachers are. That model is designed to advertise to the audience of the game, not the players.
-Rick
Is it only a problem in games? (Score:2)
I think most people generally tune out most ads. Their impact is actually zero. It's occasionally possible that IF I'm thinking of buying something and IF the ad is catchy and IF I happen to notice a particularly clever presentation or jingle, it may briefly impinge on my consciou
Really (Score:2)
Advertising corrupts. (Score:1)
Why do you think so many newspapers soft-pedal the bad news about global warming, and still have huge sections devoted to buying and driving c
Eve Online in-game advertisement. (Score:3, Informative)
At all jumpgates there are billboards, and they will show advertisements for in-game corporations (Such as Quafe, who makes energy drinks, strangely enough they buy cigarettes, garbage and assorted minerals...), or list one of the current top5 most wanted people. Inside stations there will be advertisement for the corporation in question all over the place, and even for other corporations as well.
This adds to the whole game, and to the whole atmosphere of play.
Another great example is the stripbar advertisement billboard that comes with certain built outposts, including the picture of a stripper
However any 'real world' advertisement in this game would just simply make no sense. And I think there are quite a lot of games where advertisement wouldn't make sense, or just be plain annoying or detracting from the game.
Another example where it does work is in Quake (2?) where the background music was written by Nine Inch Nails (NIN for short), you can get a nailgun as a weapon, and the boxes containing the nails actually have the NIN log on them, that's just brilliant, and in its way an advertisement for the band (Whom I'll visit in March
Just my 2 rambling isk.
Splut.
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Really a question for the writers (Score:2)
I remember once noticing while flipping through channels a few years ago that one of the characters on a sitcom - Friends or some other thing - was drinking a beer, an actual bottled beer. And I thought, wow, it really seems more authentic to see characters doing the sorts of things you would expect.
As another poster very astutely pointed out, this can add realism and authenticity to a game
0% retention (Score:1)
Reason behind ineffectiveness (Score:2)
The trick is to have the ads related to something within the game. For example, UT2004 can have a sniper tower with a billboard advertising Jolt cola as "electrifing" - and that sniper tower cont
I'm skeptical about this... (Score:2)
Well, these anylists succeeded in completely missing the point of advertising. Advertising is ALL subconcious and subliminal. Do you really think people go out and buy a McDonald's hamburger because they are intently watching the commercial? Bullshit. It's all about brand recognition. Even something as simple as having a distinctive logo, that you can simply flash the outline, and you're brain, somewhere deep inside says "Sun Microsystems" (I'll use that one because it's one of my favorite logos).
In a rac
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