Advergaming (a portmanteau of "advertising" and "gaming") is the practice of using video games to advertise a product, organization or viewpoint. The term "advergames" was coined in January 2000 by Anthony Giallourakis, and later mentioned by Wired's "Jargon Watch" column in 2001. It has been applied to various free online games commissioned by major companies.

With the growth of the internet, advergames have proliferated, often becoming the most visited aspect of brand websites and becoming an integrated part of brand media planning in an increasingly fractured media environment. Advergames theoretically promote repeated traffic to websites and reinforce brands. Users choosing to register to be eligible for prizes can help marketers collect customer data. Gamers may also invite their friends to participate, which could assist promotion by word of mouth, or "viral marketing."

Games for advertising are sometimes classified as a type of serious game, as these games have a strong educational or training purpose other than pure entertainment.

Jesse Schell ( Born on June 13, 1970 ) is a professor of entertainment technology and game design at Carnegie Mellon University's (CMU) Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), a joint master's program between the College of Fine Arts and School of Computer Science in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

After graduating from the Information Networking Institute at CMU in 1994 with a Masters of Science in Computer Networking and Virtual Reality, Jesse Schell went on to work for Bell Labs. In 1995 he joined Walt Disney Imagineering, where he worked for seven year in capacity of programmer, manager, designer and Creative Director on several projects. These included rides for theme parks, DisneyQuest and the first Massively Multiplayer game for kids – Toontown Online. During his time at Disney, he met Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who was taking a sabbatical in Jesse's lab. When Randy founded the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU he invited Jesse to become a faculty member. He joined the faculty in 2002.