Xbox Live May Soon Integrate Advertising to Subsidize Subscription Costs
By Andrew McLaughlin |
April 26th, 2006
(2) Comments
It looks like Microsoft is set to acquire video game advertising company Massive Inc. for somewhere between $200 and $400 million. This acquisition makes a lot of sense as non-traditional advertising has been growing through the internet and in-game advertising for the past several years. The video game market is fast growing with in-game advertising becoming even more important as gamers spend significant captive time in front of their gaming consoles.
Joystiq is predicting that this acquisition could be integrated into the Xbox Live service to generate additional revenue from the platform and to offset the cost to play online games. This would definitely make some people happy! Massive’s client list includes Coca Cola and Honda which demonstrates that big companies are giving this a series look. It could be possible that Microsoft is also looking to increase its overall knowledge base of the advertising space. This could help them in several different areas ranging from gaming to IPTV platforms.
The interesting feature with online gaming and advertising is that the actual advertisements can be changed dynamically and targeted based on your gaming profile while you are online. Historically, games that included advertising only included static ads that couldn’t be updated once the game disc was shipped. These barriers are quickly fading. This makes the online ad business even more relevant and potentially very lucrative to all parties. This could be the start of an acquisition trend for smaller non-traditional advertising houses.
Filed in: Industry Buzz
-
http://thepit.boldlygoingnowhere.org/blog/static.php?page=chiligear chili
-
Andrew McLaughlin