• ClickZ, Wednesday, May 10, 2006 10:30 AM

ClickZ reports that brands and their agencies are all over this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, having "booked wall-to-wall meetings with ad sales execs at the game studios and with the in-game ad firms that represent their games." Have video games finally arrived? Perhaps. And perhaps the benchmark is Microsoft finalizing its deal to acquire the in-game ad serving company Massive Incorporated. Advertisers now know that Microsoft will be opening up inventory to sell directly through XBox Live the online gaming platform Bill Gates spent some time yesterday talking up. Nevertheless, most of the conversations at the video game expo have been about hard-coded in-game placements rather than the dynamic billboards served up by companies like Massive. Product integrations in video games have proven to be very lucrative partnerships for brands--especially because they can be so interactive. Dynamic in-game ad serving is still years away from scaling meaningfully for advertisers.

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