A few years ago, many industry analysts forecasted all sorts of grand numbers for the in-game advertising sector. The reality, however, is that the market just hasn’t seen a ton of growth. EA’s general manager of free-to-play, Ben Cousins, talks about the stagnant in-game ad market and the rapid growth of micro-transactions.
“We actually aren’t getting much from ad revenue at all. The in-game advertising business hasn’t grown as fast as people expected it to,” he said, adding that “micro-transactions are a far better bet. If you think about how fast the virtual goods business has grown in the last year or so, it s been much quicker and become a much more reliable source of revenue.”
Referring to the upcoming release of Battlefield: Play4Free and last year’s free-to-play Battlefield Heroes, Cousins noted, “We hedged our bets. We thought we d do in-game advertising and virtual goods sales, and one of those took off really fast and the other hasn t really taken off at all.”
Cousins added that in-game ads need to be carefully planned out to succeed. “I think it’s more about specific deals where you can tie the content in, he said. We did a deal with Dr Pepper for Battlefield Heroes, where if you buy a bottle and scan in the code you get an exclusive outfit. That kind of deep integration will work, I think, but I m not convinced that we’ll have billboards in games and things like that. Maybe those days are over.”
Source: Edge {link no longer active}
