in game advertising always reminds me that what I'm playing is a "product".
Some games get away with it, but when I see things like coca cola/pepsi machines or other various placements it makes the game feel cheap.
Some games get away with it by being clever; usually if the placement has some reference to the game itself. Like if a coca-cola bottle is found in the dirt on a foreign planet, or if a city is called walmart-opia, or like in MGS4 how Snake has an ipod in his inventory among the other hi-tech killing equipment.
I don't have a problem with an ad on a tv in a game per-se, but I do with a billboard, because it's just RANDOM product placement. But it's still not that bad. I can forget about it.
Back to the tv ad, I think the worst part about it is that it is an actual tv ad from right now IRL. It's not a sign. It is forever fixed in these past couple months. It will never change, 5 years down the road how "realistic" will that be? It's different if it's a logo, or a bag of chips, or the actual product itself because the lifetimes for each of those things is a number of years, not a number of weeks.
I'll play those games in the future and think, "haha look at this product placement. I wish they'd left that out". However, if you see this ad in the future you'll think, "...this is really dated and poorly done".
Granted, the tv one has to be turned on, but it's not like you can miss it if what one poster here was saying is true, you're turning on tvs through the whole game AND it's an achievement. I don't think an ad really takes away from the gameplay, but it does take away from the integrity of the game.
