• Reuters.com, Tuesday, September 4, 2007 10:45 AM

In-game advertising company DoubleFusion, whose technology can dynamically serve ads into video games, is rolling out a new product that allows ad-buyers to create campaigns in a similar fashion to the way they buy TV spots-i.e. over anything from new games to popular older, possibly free, titles.

Ad inventory is something game developers must hard-code into their games, allowing brokers like Double Fusion to sell ad content in the locations created by developers. Double Fusion's new technology lets publishers change or add new ad locations post-development with "almost unlimited flexibility."

This could lead to a movement of re-releasing old titles free of charge to cash in on their advertising potential. Like movies, video games typically have a short window at retail. Once they sell out, most, save the biggest hits, go out of print soon thereafter. Some become part of Web-based or digital download services, but few last due to a lack of ad options. The first publishers to incorporate the new technology, called fusion.runtime, are French publisher Ubisoft Entertainment, Korean online game publisher NCsoft Corp, and American casual game publisher Oberon Media.

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