Earlier this year, a well-known beer company ran a strange ad before the Super Bowl. After playing a short video, they asked listeners to listen to an 8-hour soundscape while they slept, and in return, they offered a 12-pack of beer for half price (the 12-pack was free if shared with a friend). The intent is to embed positive thoughts and feelings about the brand and its products while listeners are asleep, something they call Targeted Dream Incubation. (If this company is advertising while people are sleeping, they won't need any extra coverage from us!) .

It seems like a gimmick, but as an open letter from sleep researchers protesting this type of advertising points out, people are very susceptible to suggestion during sleep. Nor is it a leap to tie this to gaming: last year Xbox used Targeted Dream Incubation as part of its Xbox Series X advertising campaign, creating videos from dreams that selected streamers had after playing the new console for the first time.

The hit game "The Tetris Effect" was also named after the phenomenon of literally continuing to see tetromino shapes in dreams and in nature. An interesting psychological phenomenon in its own right, it has also been applied to the treatment of PTSD flashbacks. Hopefully, "interesting things about the brain" isn't an area that will soon be exploited for advertising.

Both the Xbox ads and the Tetris Effect are marketing the stickiness of the game during sleep rather than using it directly for the masses, which is not comforting when you know that advertisers from beer companies are ready to take that step.

This isn't the only intrusive advertising being done these days: Facebook is preparing to introduce ads into its Oculus Quest games and apps using data from user profiles, which became mandatory for using VR gaming headsets last October.