As it turns out, Electronic Arts’ most popular game on Facebook, The Sims Social, is a perfect candidate for in-game advertising.

“It lends itself well with brands,” said Dave Madden, EA’s SVP of global media solutions. “Across The Sims Social, there’s nutrition, hygiene and careers.”

After all, it’s much harder to work a bottle of shampoo into a game that’s set in the forest or at a poker table. But when a game is about sleeping, eating microwave dinners or taking showers, that sort of product placement becomes much easier.

That’s how Unilever got interested.

In January, the massive consumer brands company — known for being the second-largest advertiser in the world — kicked off a multimillion dollar, year-long advertising campaign with EA.

It started with providing a virtual Dove Hair Spa in the Sims’ bathroom, where people’s avatars shampooed using the “Care & Repair with Dove Hair Therapy shower.” Upcoming Unilever products will include ice cream brands for the spring and summer, such as the new Magnum Mini ice cream bars, Yosicle ice pops, Cornetto ice cream cones and Heartbrand ice cream.

Because the advertisements offer virtual goods for free, players don’t typically mind interacting with the product placements. The Sims Social offers a fairly large global audience, attracting roughly three million daily users and 17.2 million monthly active users to make it one of the top 15 games on Facebook, according to AppData.

While advertising in social games by Electronic Arts or other big publishers like Zynga isn’t new, Madden said it is becoming more routine.

“Everyone knows the audience is there, and that they are spending a lot of time in the games, but from a media standpoint, it’s still been fairly new,” he said. “For a global company like Unilever to want to partner with EA and launch a campaign globally, it’s an indication that gaming is finding a stage.”

To accommodate the interest, Madden said they’ve created a rate card, developed four types of in-game advertising features, and have determined a calendar for how much integration work the developers can handle.

Here are the four advertising types that EA has focused on:

1. Traffic Drivers: Typically, these ads drive players in the game to visit a brand’s Facebook page, where they can download a free in-game virtual good. In a two-week period, more than one million players from The Sims redeemed the Dove Hair Spa virtual items in their games, and 50 percent of the players chose to “Like” the brand on their own accord.
2. Quests: These are the deepest and most involved. Players will have to take a number of steps inside the game to earn a valuable item at the end. For instance, Toyota launched a quest where players earned a Prius.
3. Store Tabs: In the virtual goods store, there will be a whole tab dedicated to the brand. Unilever, which plans to do all four types of advertising, plans to roll out a Dove tab, where users will see five items related to vanity and hair care.
4. Media Integrations: Users can watch a short video advertisement or other type of media, to unlock a virtual good.

Matt Spiegel is perhaps best known for starting Resolution Media, which he led for more than four years before selling to Omnicom Group. Since then he’s held several positions at the global advertising and marketing company, including CEO of its media digital group.

Spiegel begins today as the CEO at Tap.me, which is building an ad network focused on monetizing games. It is starting with mobile applications and then will move to other platforms, like Facebook.

The founding team, which is made up of former game developers, including CEO Joshua Hernandez, recognized the need for a better ad platform.

“What they witnessed in the game space is that most ads interrupted the game play and were not very effective,” Spiegel said.

The ads were either banners that were ignored during game play, or were premium sponsorships, which consisted of integrated product placements. The latter was more effective, but time consuming and not easily scalable.

Despite the downfalls, games continue to be the most downloaded applications. “We’ve reached a tipping point, where the consumer attention and time spent on games has gotten to the point where brands should look at it as a content channel,” Spiegel said.

So, in essence, the company believes that ads should not interrupt the game play, but that they can be shown before the game.

It works like this: A game developer picks something in its game that can be sponsored, such as being able to jump higher, access to a virtual good, gaining more speed or endurance, or being able to unlock a new level. Tap.me then provides advertisers that will sponsor those items, like Red Bull or Gatorade. Players have the choice of playing with or without the advertisements.

Because many of the ad units are for similar actions or items, the market can reach scale, unlike customized sponsorships, like a car company providing a free tractor in a farming game.

So far, the company has more than 35 games signed up on Apple and Android and recently hit two million uniques on the Tap.Me platform. Some games include: Hospital Havok 2, Escape 3D: Bathroom 2, Drake’s Tower, Charmed and Mr. Runner.

Hernandez said so far most of the players, or 88 percent, opt in for the advertisements and are choosing to interact with the brand. He said the sponsorships also result in longer game play, and that the users who did pick to see the ads spent 63 percent more time in the game than players who did not.

Tap.me was originally founded in 2009 as a game company, but after seeing the challenges with in-game advertising, it shifted its focus in 2010 to advertising. The 15-employee company has raised $1.44 million from angel investors and two Chicago VCs, I2A Fund and Hyde Park Angels.

Now with Spiegel on board, the company plans to raise more capital and accelerate the number of advertisers and game makers it has on board.

The sponsorship is the first example of how EA expects to monetize demos of games going forward. The technology it built to do so is called EA Signal, which allows for advertising in demos, including the ability to insert videos of celebrity appearances and developer interviews or other tutorials into the game.

Brands and marketers can also conduct contests and sweepstakes inside games.

In the case of Madden NFL 12, EA is trying a little bit of everything the first time around. Along with the chance to win a car, the demo lets players watch videos and learn new elements of the game.

The videos feature Van Bernardino, who goes by the name “Prodigy” and is known in gaming circles for being a champion Madden NFL videogame player. In the video, he drives a Chevy Cruze down California’s coast to meet up with former New Orleans Saints halfback and Super Bowl champion Reggie Bush.

Together, Prodigy and Bush demonstrate how to play the game, and give specific instructions on how to run an “audible.” That’s when the quarterback decides to run a different play at the last minute and calls it out to his players.

If a player uses an audible to score a touchdown, he or she will receive a special code. The code must be entered on the Madden NFL 12 Facebook fan page for a chance to win a 2011 Chevy Cruze.

Most of EA’s big console releases have a demo, so this will only be the first of many brand partnerships.

Last year the Madden demo was played by more than two million gamers. Overall, EA says it reaches about 70 million users on both Xbox and PlayStation through its demos. That’s a sizeable audience.

“In the console environment, one of the great places to identify value is in the demo,” EA’s SVP Dave Madden said. “They are in a buying mode. It’s the right mind-set.”

The full version of Madden comes on Aug. 30, and the contest ends Sept. 30.