Real as in streaming advertisements piped dynamically to games like EA's forthcoming Madden 2008, NASCAR 2008, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008, NHL Hockey 2008, and Skate. An extension of Microsoft's game ad company Massive Inc. (purchased by the Redmond software leviathan last year for $200 million), the new EA/Microsoft deal will allow advertisers to feed changeable ads live to virtual billboards or other promotional in-game constructs. Goodbye static, built-in, quickly outmoded huckstering, hello voguish virtual real estate with advertising space for sale by the hour, day, week, etc.
How's it work? Massive's technology tracks the number of seconds gamers spend in view of an ad, then charges advertisers in 10 second exposure increments. 60 seconds @ $10/10 sec interval would net Microsoft $60, 30 seconds $30, and so on. Even if that rate's a dime or a penny, imagine the revenue windfalls with hundreds of thousands or even millions of gamers basking in the floodlit luminescence of "Say hello to iPhone" and "Always Coca-Cola."
2006's dynamic in-game ad spending? $26.1 million. 2007's projected: $100 million, and by 2010? Up to $645 million according to estimates from Yankee Group (as reported by AP via the Washington Post).
Questions:
- The first batch of games probably won't require you be online to access single player mode, but are we fast approaching a point at which this choice goes away?
- The transition from static to dynamic advertising could signal an order of magnitude shift in revenue returns for game publishers if advertisers jump onboard (multiple advertisers purchasing ads over the life of the product). Should this entail price breaks on games in the $60-plus range?
- If certain ads are distracting or positioned in a disruptive manner, will we have any recourse (collectively speaking) to have those ads removed or changed?
- Will ads be custom-tailored (think Amazon) for discrete gamer profiles? If yes, will we (also like Amazon) be able to turn such a feature off?
The current series of in-game advertisements have not overly been intrusive, yet. These dynamic ads are currently displayed in the EA game Battlefield 2142. Though I must state the ad software that was included inside the game code was not ironically advertised to the buyers. There was a little pamphlet inside the case behind the user manual in legalese stating there is software that will enable in-game ads. Due to what was basically outrage some industrious persons were able to find and disable the code for the ads.
With regards to the price breaks on games with ingame ads. Of course there should be price breaks on what has now become subsidized gaming. Will there be? No, of course not the game publishers are there of course to make money. With the increasing costs of actual game production. I can understand the need to find a reliable secondary income in case the game does not do well.
Custom tailored profiles must have a opt in/out feature and the ability to turn on/off.
wow, this is really a cool feature. Yeah, it's more advertisements (and who needs those?), but it will also make car-driving video games much more "life like", when you're driving through town and the billboards are advertising things that are actually relevant, or at least produced in this decade.l
Now, if only city skylines would be dynamically updated as well.
If they start making money by having us simply play the games, i say they should, though our xbox live accounts, give us access to one free copy of any EA game with live advertising per month. This way i would get free games, and they would get maximum exposure for their adds, perhaps resulting in even higher profits than what they could acheive by selling the games.