Microsoft's Massive in-game ad business has tapped comScore to gain greater insight into clients' in-game advertising efforts.
According to Massive General Manager JJ Richards, the big question is exactly what actions gamers take after encountering ads during game play.
"We know from 80-plus independently verified post-campaign studies that in-game advertising increases brand engagement," said Richards. "But, what we didn't know was the correlation between in-game ads and consumer action."
Per the deal, Ad Effx Action Lift for Gaming will match in-game console ad serving data from Massive with comScore's third-party, post-campaign panel data to track and measure in-game advertising effectiveness.
By combining Microsoft's anonymous ID data -- which it says is common across Xbox LIVE and Microsoft Web properties -- with user data from comScore's panel of two million Internet users worldwide, comScore will attempt to determine whether panelists who saw in-game ads subsequently visited a brand's Web site, searched brand-related terms, or engaged in other online behaviors important to advertisers.
The new methodology raises the quality of in-game ad measurement to a standard accepted for other forms of digital advertising, according to Mike Hurt, SVP at comScore.
"We believe Ad Effx Action Lift for Gaming puts in-game advertising campaign measurement on a level playing field with comparable digital media," Hurt said. Yet all is not well at Massive, which Microsoft acquired for an estimated $200 million-to-$400 million in 2006. Earlier this year, it lost nearly 30% of its staff amid a broad round of layoffs at Microsoft, and is even rumored to be for sale. The health of the unit has even come into question -- rumors that Richards felt obliged to denounce as "inaccurate information" and "wild speculation" in a blog post earlier this month. In it, he said Massive was responsible for "double-digit year-on-year revenue growth" during Microsoft's fiscal year, which ended in June.
ComScore and Massive say they have submitted the new methodology to the Advertising Research Foundation for validation.
Preliminary research conducted by comScore using the new methodology on a number of recent Massive in-game campaigns looks very promising for Massive.
In those early tests, comScore found that consumers exposed to in-game ads for TV shows were 280% more likely to visit a TV channel's Web site. Likewise, consumer exposed to related ads were 125% more likely to search for a movie rental brand, 57% more likely to visit a movie rental brand's Web site, and 17% more likely to visit entertainment sites after seeing ads for a particular movie.