Talk about thinking outside the box! The Scottish government is spending £10,000 on billboard ads. You say this sounds quite pedestrian? I’ll grant you that except the billboards are completely virtual. They appear when players are logged into the online XBox Live service and playing Need for Speed: Carbon, Project Gotham Racing 4 or Pro Evolution Soccer 2008.

Certainly these ads are a bargain for the price, but will they make a difference? In the past I may have questioned whether the people playing these games are the demographic the government should be targeting, but no longer. Gaming seems to have gone mainstream. Still, I’d expect this type of ad to be more of a public service announcement freebie than something a government would have to pay for.

XBox Live image courtesy of the BBC News.