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GCHQ will target games like the Splinter Cell series with the aim of encouraging IT-literate graduates to apply to the department.

"This new and innovative venture is one element of our wider recruitment campaign," says a GCHQ spokesperson.

"GCHQ employs a wide range of skills including, intelligence

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analysts, technologists, mathematicians, linguists, project managers and information specialists. This initiative will, we hope, capture the imagination of people with a particular interest in IT."

The campaign will run for one month, starting at the end of October. GCHQ has been working with Massive, and its recruitment partner TMP, to serve the adverts. Massive is a subsidiary of Microsoft that works to implant advertising in over 100 games titles from 40 publishers.

"Although press advertising still plays an important role, it's now just one element of an integrated approach to recruitment that forward thinking clients like GCHQ are spearheading," says Laura Robertson, GCHQ's Account Director at TMP Worldwide.

Adverts will also appear in Need for Speed Carbon and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, as billboards displaying "Careers in British Intelligence".