Startup company Adventurize has developed a product that would let companies advertise to the more than 10 million users who play Mojang’s adventure-building game Minecraft. The product, now in open beta, will run in the chat window of the game and serve up text advertisements during play. Adventurize joins several other companies with similar products, such as AdCraft and Project Wonderful.
Adventurize’s program runs on the popular server software Bukkit that allows for plug-ins the same way the single-player game allows for mods. The company is trying to help advertisers reach Minecraft players (often with ads for public Minecraft servers) as well as help server owners generate some ad revenue to offset server costs. Adventurize’s software lets companies pay for the text ads on a per-day rate. By contrast, Adcraft’s ad program, which has been in beta since February, charges advertisers per click. Project Wonderful, which claims more than 22 million ad impressions so far, uses a day rate.
All of this advertising activity is not connected to or authorized by Mojang, since both public and private Minecraft servers are not run by the game maker. Displaying ads to players who paid $30 for a game may not go over well. So far Mojang has not commented on the issue, and there have been no signs of major complaints over advertising among the Minecraft player community. For now, it looks like in-game advertising will get a chance to get a foothold in Minecraft.
Source: GigaOM
