Here is another look at the
growing market for in-game advertising, courtesy of an article from Business Week published on February 27,
2006 (remember to stay tuned to Joystiq for all your soothsaying needs). This essay notes two key factors to the
industry's growth: online gaming, and Nielsen's latest data. The latter has excited marketers, who learned from Nielsen
that Tony Hawk's American Wasteland displayed a 3D vehicle on screen "an average of 23 times in 20
minutes," and that gamers polled did not express concern about its presence affecting their enjoyment of the
game.The former reason, online gaming, allows marketers to purchase advertisements in blocks of time, much in the way television commercials are handled. This would allow ads to stay fresh and current, while also providing a steady cash-flow to the publisher, developer, and/or online provider (Xbox Live, Sony HUB, etc.).
One foreboding note mentioned, however, is that Chrysler and Activision had "extensive back-and-forth discussion during [American Wasteland's] production"--gaming is a business, after all, but could a car company (or any company, for that matter) indirectly control the development of a title simply by threatening to pull advertisements (and the subsequent funding of the project therein)? This is a practice seen in Hollywood (watch Michael Bay's The Island, for example), but generally reserved for more big-budget escapist films anyhow.
In a recent poll, Joystiq readers were very warm to the idea of an ad-supported Xbox Live service.
[via AdJab]
