Advertising in gaming is a business that has taken off over the last couple of years. Micosoft is planning to acquire Massive Inc. next week. Massive is one of a handful of companies that specializes in placing products or advertisements in online video games, a form of interactive advertising that’s potentially more alluring to prospective consumers.
Ads in games blend into the scenery, so a character might pass a billboard with an embedded ad or might walk by a bank of televisions running a video ad. Sports games in particular afford target-rich opportunities for advertising — stadiums in football or racing-car driving games, for example, come adorned with ads.
Microsoft is not alone in pursing more targeted advertising online. Last week, Google discussed plans to use data about consumers’ online behavior to serve up more targeted, informative, and therefore more lucrative, advertising to its users.
Most online advertising revenue currently comes from banner ads or sponsored links that accompany search results, but firms are focusing on additional dimensions to their ads, as with games. More detailed information about people’s habits, what they search for, what they buy online, even what they talk about in e-mails will be combined with demographics and product preferences to create a profile to deliver timely advertisements to appear during playing of a game.
“It’s a totally different paradigm shift” in advertising, Michigan State University professor Hairong Li told the Washington Post. “They have to be less intrusive and more subtle. You can’t put it in someone’s face. The equation I use is information plus entertainment plus engagement minus intrusiveness equals effectiveness.”
Massive, for example, places ads for products such as clothing, soft drinks, movies and music on multiplayer console games, whose largest audience is young men. The three-year-old company’s Web site says it delivers ads into more than 100 game titles that reach millions of gamers a week.
No responses yet