Microsoft starts Massive in-game advertising push

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 04 December 2008 08:30

IT Industry - Strategy

So you thought you could escape the barrage of advertising on commercial and pay TV by turning to games as a major source of entertainment? Not if Microsoft can help it! As if we weren't already paying enough for games, big-name titles are increasingly being promoted as advertising conduits. Bizarrely, many gamers seem happy to have their eyeballs assaulted with commercial messages.

Microsoft's Massive subsidiary this week ran an event giving current and potential advertisers a preview of games slated for 2009 along with first dibs on advertising space.

Massive claims to have achieved various in-game 'firsts' during 2008, including the first in-game presidential ad campaign (supporting Barack Obama), and the first in-game text campaign (for Subway) in which players were invited to request cheat codes and hints via text messages.

In-game advertising appears to be scarily effective: that Subway campaign resulted in a 20 percent increase in gamers visiting Subway after seeing the ads.

And a campaign for Ford "generated big lifts (up to 28 percent) across several brand metrics and led to gamers searching for more information about Ford vehicles on the Ford Web site and at dealerships", according to Massive officials.

Strangely, gamers seem to welcome the ads. Although you'd only expect Massive to publicise favourable statistics, 73 percent of gamers said the Subway ads "looked cool in the game" and 86 percent said they "make the game more realistic."

What does that say for the supposedly 'media savvy' generations that make up the bulk of players on these platforms? See page 2.