In game advertising is booming

In 2006, Microsoft purchased the in-game advertising network known as Massive for between 200 and 400 million dollars. JJ Richards, who is current general manager of the firm, believes that the in-game advertising forum is doing well and growing, despite the steep layoffs in his unit and amid rumors that Microsoft is shopping around for potential purchasers of the firm. During Massive's 2009 fiscal year, they achieved a double digit year on year growth of revenue, even in the face of one of the worst economic downturns of the last century. The first quarter sales for the company are also targeted at exceeding more than one hundred percent just one month into it. Gaming has become exceedingly popular and looks forward to even more growth in years to come. Gaming has superseded television as entertainment for a large number of the population. This means that TV no longer has the ability to influence purchasing habits of these people. This is where in-game advertising comes in. With all these people playing on games, it's only the natural course of things that advertising becomes more and more prevalent in that forum. In-game advertising also means that advertisers have a way of targeting their buyers more closely than they would on TV as certain demographics are found with each game type. In game advertising tends to be a lot more clever and a lot more entertaining than advertising shown on TV.

Advertising is shunned by many because it is in your face and doesn't show much ingenuity. It's irritating, not entertaining. With gaming advertising, the advertisers have to be clever in the way they present their advertising to the gaming public. Advertising within the gaming industry is measurable, it's inexpensive and it's easy to do. Advertisers have found that producing creative in-game campaigns is easy, they have effective metrics for tracking their results available to them and pricing is basically inline with what cable TV charges for the young demographics. The icing on this little cake is that gamers seem to not only not mind the advertising, they kind of like it because it adds realism to the game.

While Massive's fiscal numbers aren't necessarily evidence of a booming market, being able to beat your quarterly sales target is certainly a positive outcome in an economy such as this one. Because of the success shown in this type of marketing it is quite possible that this form of advertising will reach the one billion mark by 2014 and that's nothing to sniff at. Microsoft had projected that in-game ads would be worth that much by 2010 so they may be a bit put out by the slower rise of the market, however any growth in an economy in a strong downturn is quite a feat in just about anyone's book. It's a sure thing that in-game advertising isn't going to disappear any time soon, in fact if you're a gamer, you can expect to see more and more of this type of advertising reaching you as you play.

This article was written on behalf of MKH who specialize in providing London Recruitment Advertising. MKH is one of the countries leading Marketing Recruitment Agencies .