• by Ross Fadner , September 12, 2004

Last Tuesday, New York-based inGamePartners, a three-month old tech firm specializing in video game advertising, signed a distribution deal with GriffinRun and PHXX, two of the largest public online video gaming networks on the Web that, between them, comprise 100 to 150 million impressions per month.

Since then, the firm has organized two ad campaigns for Spike TV, a cable network that designs shows specifically for 18- to-34-year-old males, and marketing firm SoulKool, which represents entertainment industry brands like hip-hop group OutKast.

The recent deals are all part of inGame's efforts to become a major player in the rapidly growing world of online gaming--which is expected to hit $1.9 billion this year and $9.8 billion by 2009, according to the interactive entertainment research firm DFC Intelligence. Madison Avenue, hoping to broaden its reach beyond the shrinking television audience, is acutely interested in the advertising possibilities connected to online gaming.

inGame's most recent campaign, which was for Spike TV's new show, "52 Favorite Cars," came about after Spike TV approached inGame with a last minute-request for a branding initiative for the new show. inGame produced billboards on the walls and buildings of the virtual world in CounterStrike, a first person shooter. The campaign targeted approximately 250,000 male gamers, but actually reached in excess of 300,000, according to company CEO Darren Herman. During loading times, inGame serves a Web page with clickable information about the sponsor it will be serving ads for.

The company also ran a campaign over the weekend for SoulKool client iGames Expo, an online gaming exposition that took place in New York last week.

Herman said the company is in talks with all the major online gaming networks, including CyberAthletes Gaming League and the Global Gaming network. He said inGamePartners aims to become an Internet ad serving company--like DoubleClick or aQuantive's AtlasDMT--but specifically for the online video gaming market. inGame serves its ads through a piece of API (application programming interface) code inserted inside each game, enabling it to receive ads from inGame's server. The little tag allows In-Game to target the same as any ad-serving network, but its ads are seamlessly integrated into the actual game itself.

inGame can serve ads to any gaming platform that has an Internet connection: a mobile phone, BlackBerry, or Internet-enabled console or portable gaming console. But for standard consoles or portable gaming consoles, the API code would have to be built into each individual game by the game publisher.

If inGame gets a distribution deal with the major consoles (such as Playstation 2 or XBox), it will be breaking new ground in video game advertising. These deals are still off in the distance, however. Ad-serving functionality would enable advertisers to reach consumers in a real-time manner that has never before been possible. It would also enable them to serve targeted ads to individual consumers through registration data provided by its advertising clients.

With console games, in the past, advertisers have had to contend with the long lead times it takes to develop a video game--often one year or more. Also, in the past, sponsorships and product placements inside games have been permanent, one-time buys. Real-time ad-serving would enable the company to show different ads to different people in a time-sensitive manner. For example, an online game set in New York City could display different virtual billboards in Times Square, depending on the gamer.