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Burnout Paradise screenshot

VideoGamer.com: What was your opinion of the Barack Obama in-game advertising?

EB: It's fantastic. It really validates the gaming audience as being a very valuable audience that's taken seriously now. These people understand that these aren't 12-year-old kids, these are voters, these are people that are going to shape the future of a country and they're valuable people that should be targeted with campaign advertising. From a market perspective the fact that governments and potential governments and those kinds of people are now taking games and gamers seriously, It bodes very well for everybody's future. You look at some of the things that happen in the industry with trying to get governments to do tax credits and subsidise, those things gamers don't see but are critical to the growth of this sector in the long term. The fact that those types of people are now taking gaming seriously enough to pay for advertising within those games is good for everyone. It bodes a good sign for the future of video gaming.

VideoGamer.com: Is it something you can see the British government ever doing?

EB: It's definitely possible. You've already seen the COI (the Central Office of Information) buying ads in games because they find it very hard to reach the youth demographic who are gaming. They do a lot of things putting story lines into some of the soaps, Hollyoaks and those kind of things. They have already done some messaging within video games. So it's a definite logical step.

VideoGamer.com: Might advertising make its way into console dashboards, or PS3 Home perhaps?

EB: Technically we can. We've always focused on in-game mainly because for us the argument to the advertiser is, they're playing the game and our message comes on screen to a certain size for a certain duration, so you can basically guarantee delivery, you can guarantee that somebody has seen that message. The problem with websites and those kinds of interfaces, they're fairly transient, and you're there for a different reason than when you're in the game, you're not engaged with controlling your character or anything, you're transient, you're clicking through and browsing. So we've left that stuff to web advertising specialists. And even the type of ads that we deliver are different. So within the game, creatives are fairly parallel with outdoor advertising. It's image driven, it's a strap line, it's a product release message or it's a brand building exercise. With the ads that you see on the websites they're basically trying to get you to click through to make a transaction and so they have different effects, they come from different budgets. There is crossover and we've looked at and continue to look at bringing those types of opportunities into the network but the focus today is definitely purely on in-game because it's a consistent argument for us to bring to advertisers. It's higher value.

VideoGamer.com: With the credit crunch will in-game advertising continue to grow? Will gamers see it more and more in their games?

EB: I think at the moment there's considerably more inventory available than there are ad dollars, and so the room for growth is phenomenal. Last month we saw revenues that were about a third of the entire last year's revenues. With the credit crunch gamers are spending more time at home with video games and advertisers are looking for more measurable media. We are the most measurable cost-effective way of delivering what we call above the line messaging, so like print, TV, outdoor, those kind of image based campaigns. So we've seen a huge up shift in brands wanting to A, reach the audience that's gaming and B, engage with measurable media. People won't notice a difference because, you still see the ads there now you're not going to see more ads because the inventory is set in stone, we decide the ads at the development stage, where they go within the environments, you're not going to suddenly see lots more ads popping up. We're just filling more of the inventory over the life cycle of the game, basically. And also more territories. We're opening offices all around the world, we've just opened a French office, we've got a Germany office, a UK office, we're doing deals in Spain, Poland and Australia. That's the other thing, we're unlocking other territories where there's gamers and where there are users.

VideoGamer.com: Do you see a future where triple-A games might be totally funded through in-game advertising and therefore free to buy?

EB: I think from a console perspective, for a big triple-A console release I think that's a long long long way off, if ever, simply because, things like the unit fee costs, the royalty costs to the hardware manufacturers alone, it's very significant versus the amount of revenue that in-game ads are providing. For PC products, we're already doing it. We've already taken a relatively niche product in Trackmania Nations and made it record-breaking, it's in the Guinness Book of Records. So we've proven that. I think one of the things that people need to be cautious of when they're deciding their business models is there are a lot of business models out there that have free-to-play, almost every VC will tell you that a significant amount of their business pitches now have an ad-funded model. The reality is there's only so much ad funding revenue to go around and so not everybody is going to be able to get into that. Trackmania was successful because it just had the perfect blend, it was online, it was community driven, it had really casual, easy to pick up gameplay that was very addictive and hard to master and it was completely free and available. That had a perfect mix. Football Superstars will also do well for that same reason. It mixes casual and hardcore, MMO and virtual world, and there's a tiered structured business model to how you play and subscribe. Certainly in the next five or ten years I don't think you're ever going to see a triple-A console product fully subsidised or ever.

What's your take on in-game advertising? Let us know in the comments section below.

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