ClickZ: The Rise of the Game Titans

The video games have the numbers, having reached 40 million households. People certainly spend enough time with them, enough so that it cuts into TV viewing and, heaven forbid, Internet surfing. Ad agencies are ready to exploit the audience, with MediaVest and Y&R spawning new divisions just for the purpose. But the video games themselves lack a means to cycle in paid placements… so far.

A new company called Massive is in talks with console makers and game producers to try to organize a network able to insert ads to titles for specific flighting durations. Now that many of the game consoles are hooked up to the net for multi-player competition, ads finally have a way of getting distributed and flighted - if the game makers decide to cooperate with the cross-console effort. In the past, the game title producers have shown great affinity for proprietary standards.