According to gamesindustry.biz, Sony opening up its in-game advertising platform will spark a battle among Double Fusion, IGA and AdScape.
"Sony will offer an open platform on the PlayStation 3, allowing the three key players in the in-game advertising market to strike deals with game publishers. They already have their own PlayStation Network sales force to sell dynamic ads in Sony-produced games such as Pain. Making things open only makes things better for marketers or people who want to place ads because they aren’t the mercy of a given network," eMarketer senior writer James Belcher told Advertising Age. "Everyone’s playing around with the best model – how to charge, what gamers will and will not put up with."
Yes indeed, that is the most important factor in all of this, isn’t it? How much will us gamers put up with when it comes to in-game advertising. I think it is safe to say that ads in games like NBA 08 and Forza Motorsport are acceptable, blending into the background of moving and static billboards. But is it already too much when we are waiting for a game to load and up pops a commercial for the new Dodge Charger?
"Sony signed a deal with Nielsen last summer to measure in-game advertising and hired Darlene Kindler, formerly of AdScape, to oversee its in-game advertising efforts with an emphasis on Home."
Now this is an interesting perspective in advertising. Home can be an obvious choice to embed advertisements in creative and non-intrusive ways. I mean Home is a virtual copy of our own world in one way or another, so advertisements won’t seem as intrusive as if we were playing Dark Sector or Ratchet and Clank, for example. Something tells me Sony made Home with all of these advertisement ideas in mind. Will the extra revenue help Sony to continue providing free PSN service and low PSN download prices?
And just for perspective on the growing interest of in game advertising, "Advertising Age values videogame advertising at USD 400 million and expects it to grow during the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 23 per cent."
