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Sony forms in-game advertising group

Filed in adscape, google, in game ads, news, playstation home, sony, October 9, 2007, 5:38 pm by Jeff

Yesterday Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) announced that it was forming a new in-game advertising business unit. The unit is to be headed by Darlene Kindler who was previously VP of Publishing for Adscape Media.

The announcement did get some press - I saw it mentioned on Gamasutra & Kotaku - but I was expecting more in-depth coverage. What I found most interesting about the announcement was that the technology is solely focused on delivering dynamic in-game ads to PlayStation Home (at least for now).

Adding advertising to the Home environment is a no-brainier - Sony has been hinting at this possibility since the Home announcement @ GDC earlier this year. But constraining the new team by focusing solely on delivering Home may neglect opportunities to build a more attractive platform for PS3 publishers. To my knowledge, there is no in-game advertising technology serving dynamic ads to PlayStation 3 games.

Without building a large network of games (which provide a variety of content and experiences) they place a constraint on the reach and demographic of their customer base. You could make the analogy to the web by thinking of Home as a single web site. Selling ad opportunities on that site will be generally more difficult than selling a network of sites that provide customers with different experiences. A network size of one limits the potential set of advertisers interested in your product.

What was also interesting to me was the appointment of a former VP of Publishing for Adscape. I think this supports much of what I’ve blogged previously - that Adscape was acquired primarily for its technology (and possibly patent) portfolio - and not for its industry relationships.

On that topic - I’m interested in hearing more from Google about what’s going on with Adscape these days. http://www.adscapemedia.com/ no longer forwards to the Google acquisition FAQ and I haven’t heard any news since the July appearance at the Seattle Casual Connect games conference (link). Anyone know what’s going on over there?

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