The Times caught wind of the whole in-game advertising thing we've blogged on occasion, and wrote a feature on Massive Incorporated, the company whose technology serves ads to games in much the same way that Doubleclick serves ads to websites.
According to the story, Take-Two Interactive and Vivendi Universal Games will be including Massive's advertising software in 40 titles to be released this year alone.
Like we noted earlier today, where eyeballs go, money follows. So far, publishers aren't making much money by advertising in games. Electronic Arts earned just $10 million in advertising revenue from its games last year. That's about .25% of the company's total $4 billion take last year.
But that figure may soon change as companies seek to win back the wallets of the lucrative 18-35 year-old male demographic. Because that demographic also happens to be spending more time (and more money) than ever on game products, Massive is betting that advertisers will begin to channel more of the $12 billion per year they spend marketing to this age group on in-game advertising.
So if in-game advertising is both here to stay and a given, when are we going to start seeing some price breaks passed down to the consumer?
