I was speaking with massive inc. today for a story I'm putting together on in-game advertising, and I learned a bunch of shit I didn't know.
In a nutshell, devs have special spots in games, like billboards, where ads would run. With massives's code inside the game, Xbox (or PC owners) with a persistant connection would have ads downloaded to these preset spots. Massive confirmed for me that Splinter Cell 3 will employ this technology.
Every game would have a default image that shipped with the game, in that spot. In case they don't have a broadband connection. If not a billboard it could be say, a texture of a brick wall that would have an ad on it when someone had bought that spot.
I was very skeptical when I called them, but their COO convinced me by the end of the call. There are these thresholds that ads need to meet before it counts as an impression. A specific amount of time onscreen, how big the ad is on screen in terms of screen percentage, the angle the ad is viewed at, etc.
They also gave the example of a movie studio running heavy videogame ad rotation on wednesday and thursday before their film opened on friday. Massive feels that this technology is going to fundamentally change the economics of the videogame industry, and become over a billion dollar advertising market.
This isn't something that's a year or two years away. The technology is in Mall Tycoon right now, and is going to be in about 15 big releases (like Splinter Cell) in 2005. When I began researching for the article I thought it would be a yawn piece, but I now see that it's hugely important, and represents a fundamental shift in the way publishers make money. Think about games being sold for $20, or given away, witht he publisher making it up in ad revenue. Before you say that that's insane, remember that network TV has been doing it for 50 years.
Very very soon pretty much every game is going to have dynamic advertising that will be different every time you load the game up. Think about the GTA game like that.
In a nutshell, devs have special spots in games, like billboards, where ads would run. With massives's code inside the game, Xbox (or PC owners) with a persistant connection would have ads downloaded to these preset spots. Massive confirmed for me that Splinter Cell 3 will employ this technology.
Every game would have a default image that shipped with the game, in that spot. In case they don't have a broadband connection. If not a billboard it could be say, a texture of a brick wall that would have an ad on it when someone had bought that spot.
I was very skeptical when I called them, but their COO convinced me by the end of the call. There are these thresholds that ads need to meet before it counts as an impression. A specific amount of time onscreen, how big the ad is on screen in terms of screen percentage, the angle the ad is viewed at, etc.
They also gave the example of a movie studio running heavy videogame ad rotation on wednesday and thursday before their film opened on friday. Massive feels that this technology is going to fundamentally change the economics of the videogame industry, and become over a billion dollar advertising market.
This isn't something that's a year or two years away. The technology is in Mall Tycoon right now, and is going to be in about 15 big releases (like Splinter Cell) in 2005. When I began researching for the article I thought it would be a yawn piece, but I now see that it's hugely important, and represents a fundamental shift in the way publishers make money. Think about games being sold for $20, or given away, witht he publisher making it up in ad revenue. Before you say that that's insane, remember that network TV has been doing it for 50 years.
Very very soon pretty much every game is going to have dynamic advertising that will be different every time you load the game up. Think about the GTA game like that.
