Facebook Credits Come To More Retailers

Facebook Credits are moving into retailers like GAME and Tesco in the U.K. in the form of gift cards. They are already available at major U.S. retailers like Walmart and Best Buy.

Deborah Liu, manager of product marketing for Facebook Credits and games for Facebook, indicated that Facebook Credits could eventually expand to reach other sites where they log in using their Facebook ID. Someday it s something that we would consider, she said, but there s a lot that we want to do on Facebook.com for now.

Source: The Telegraph

Rolling Stones Use In Call Of Duty Detailed

Call of Duty: Black Ops has made good use of the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter for its ads and trailers. The exposure has meant that sales for the song have jumped from 2,000 copies the week of October 31 to 11,000 for the week ending Nov. 14, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Tim Riley, Activision VP of music affairs, indicates that licensing Gimme Shelter was not trivial. ABKCO Music & Records holds the rights to the songs and requested (and was granted) a preview of an early edit of the ad and they flew a copy out to New York rather than risk it being picked up by digital transmission.

“It’s such a big deal, such a serious song and such a big band . . . we had to fly out for it,” said Riley. “They certainly say ‘no’ more than they say ‘yes.’ It’s the Rolling Stones. It’s not like they need the money.”

Riley notes that this is the first time in Activision history that the publisher allowed another company to make edits to the ad itself, in order to meet the approval of the Rolling Stones. Sympathy for the Devil also was licensed as background music for a scene inside Call of Duty: Black Ops (that song’s weekly sales grew to nearly 5,000 for the week of November 14). Something else for the band will be used for a future element of the game, though it wasn’t confirmed whether it was an ad or not.

Source: Billboard.com

Android Ties IOS For Ad Impressions, Says Millennial

Millennial Media’s recent report stated that Apple is still the top mobile device manufacturer with a 25 percent share, compared to Samsung with 17 percent, Motorola’s 15 percent and Research in Motion’s 13.5. However, Android and iOS are now equal in the smartphone ad space, taking up 37 percent each.

Trailing in this rating is RIM with 20 percent, while Nokia’s Symbian is tied with Windows Phone and all other mobile devices with two percent. Millennial claims to reach 54.3 million users, or 81 percent of the U.S. mobile market.

Source: Fortune

Men React More Positively To Call Of Duty: Black Ops Ad

Ace Metrix noted that the People Play Real Life Duty ad for Call of Duty: Black Ops has drawn a mixed reaction from people. While male viewers ages 16-20 gave the ad an Ace Score of 770 out of total of 950 and female viewers age 36-49 scored the ad 518; it had an overall Ace Score of 644, almost 70 points above the video game category norm of 576.

This ad definitely caught people’s attention, having recorded one of the highest attention scores that we’ve seen, commented Peter Daboll, chief executive of Ace Metrix. The ad did better among males than females, but females under 35 still reacted positively. Women thirty-five and older did not like the ad, with many commenting about the violence, but then again they aren’t likely to be in the market for war-based video games.

Zynga Founds CityVille

Zynga has announced that they have launched their latest social game in CityVille. The game, which sounds an awful lot like SimCity, allows players to build up a city and interact with other people’s cities. It will be Zynga’s first international launch.

CityVille is where Monopoly meets Main Street,” said Sean Kelly, GM of CityVille. “We are thrilled to bring the world our most social game to date building on the best-of-breed gameplay that Zynga fine-tuned with FarmVille and FrontierVille. Instead of harvesting crops you’re harvesting your neighborhood, instead of clearing your friend’s frontier you’re working on a friend’s franchise. We hope players from around the world have as much fun playing CityVille as we had building it.”

Myspace Partnering With Facebook For Mashup

Myspace and Facebook recently held an invitation only event where they announced the new Mashup feature. This lets users port the likes and interests of a Facebook over to Myspace.

We are thrilled to further our collaboration with Facebook through Mashup with Facebook. This new feature is a great illustration of our strategy around social entertainment and enabling the real-time stream. The stream is one of our most popular features on Myspace, and it is now delivering an even richer entertainment experience of relevant content for our users to enjoy, said Mike Jones, CEO of Myspace. I’m particularly excited because so many people will be able to have the immediate satisfaction of enjoying their own entertainment program that they have customized themselves as well as connecting to all their passions and to the Myspace community at large.

Mashup also allows for tailored recommendations of new topic pages and profiles in real-time, enabling discovery of new entertainment experiences and greater customization. This exposes users to a broad array of content that are automatically enabled based on personal preferences and settings.

Sharing entertainment and music interests is part of many of our friendships, online and off, said Dan Rose, VP of Partnerships and Platform Marketing, Facebook. Myspace is giving people an easy way to bring their favorite bands, celebrities and movies from Facebook to create a personalized experience on Myspace from the start.

Gaikai Goes Open Beta

Recently, David Perry, who was the opening presenter at the [a]list summit, announced that Gaikai is now available for Open Beta. 1,000 initial invites were followed with 10,000 invites, with no major hardware issues detected.

The game everyone is playing first is Mass Effect 2, it’s the highest rated PC game in the last 12 months and BioWare simply rocks. They’ve been very supportive as has Electronic Arts. The good news for them is we are getting a surprising amount of people clicking ‘BUY’ without even making them a special offer, wrote Perry. We are working with lots of publishers / retailers / media sites / electronics makers / telecom companies etc. We have at least 60 deals in the pipe at some stage. (You can imagine how nuts that is to manage.) Our team has been growing nicely and we have been making some strategic hires that you will hear about in the next few weeks.

Source: DPerry.com

Google TV Ads On Board With FiOS

Google today announced that they have signed a partnership with Verizon FiOS TV. This will further the reach of the Google TV Ads platform, adding over 50 networks on Verizon FiOS TV across 3.3 million homes.

By early 2011, advertisers will be able to reach 35 million households, or almost one-third of all US cable and satellite homes through Google TV Ads. Combine this reach with our digital buying platform, and you have one powerful solution that can deliver results, writes Mark Piesanen, Director of Strategic Partnerships for Google TV Ads. Like Google, Verizon cares deeply about the evolution and future of TV advertising. Together we’re thrilled to establish this partnership to offer great inventory and access to your audience via the Google TV Ads platform.

Source: Google-tvads.Blogspot.com

Witcher 2 Gets Extras Like Crazy

During the CD Projekt Autumn Conference, details for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings were released. Along with a long list of retailers with pre-order bonuses (which can be found at http://buy.thewitcher.com), some other additions for the retail packages were revealed.

“CD Projekt Red’s philosophy with the physical and digital product is to provide tremendous value at a reasonable price,” read the release by CD Projekt. “The Premium Edition of the game, which is the standard retail edition, contains as much bonus content as the Collector’s Editions of many other games, with a Making-of DVD, official soundtrack, a world map, papercraft characters, and more. The Collector’s Edition, on the other hand, is truly a collectible, with limited availability and lots of high-value bonus material, including a marble-replica bust of Geralt, a Temerian Oren coin, an art book and much more.”

…and a partridge in a pear tree.

To find out more about the Premium and Collector’s Edition, visit, http://www.thewitcher.com.