Microsoft catches advertising bug

Stan Beer
Thursday, 27 April 2006 17:21

Your IT - Home IT

For years we have been watching shameless product placements helping to fund big budget movies - you would think everyone owned an Apple notebook! Now Microsoft has finally realised where the bread is buttered and is in the process of buying a New York based company called Massive which specialises in the placement of ads in video games.

The video games market is like a giant that never stops growing. Each year it keeps getting bigger and some people say that the games entertainment business will one day be bigger than the movies. These days the graphics and animation is so good in interactive games that product placement is a natural. Microsoft already does it, promoting itself in Xbox games such as Top Spin.

Reports say that Microsoft will pay somewhere between $200 million to $400 million for Massive. For that money, which is chicken feed for a company with a bank account the size of an SMN (small to medium sized nation), Microsoft will get technology that will enable it to place ads like billboards, watches, mobile phones, sneakers, T-shirts and anything else you can think of that the increasingly life like characters in games use these days.

To provide an example of the direction that this technology is heading, my son is a wrestling fan and loves watching the WWE on cable. However, now he can hire a WWE DVD that enables him to choose his favourite wrestlers and set up any match he wants. he can either participate or set it to automatic and let the program decide the winner. With good ad placement technology, the wrestlers could be wearing Nike T-shirts, Asic boots and Puma shorts - apologies to all the competing brands I missed.

Google has recognised the trend to advertising funding of computer-based media from the outset. Microsoft, however, coming from a user pays mindset is still caught between the worlds of selling high priced software and providing software as a service, funded by advertising. Massive may be the first real step Microsoft takes in a direction that may alter the nature of the company forever. For the skeptics, please take a look at the Apple of today compared to the Apple of five years ago.