PAIN To Debut Sony In-Game Advertising
- Scribbled on December 5th, 2007 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Industry News, PlayStation Network, Sony PlayStation 3, WTF
If you bought $9.99 for Sony’s crappy Havoc engine game, you may have spent money for dynamic in-game advertising, as Ad Week reports.
Sony wants to charge different rates to advertisers based on how many people are playing Pain. When more people are engaged, rates would be higher, and when fewer people are playing, rates would be lower… Nielsen Media Research’s video game division, Nielsen Games, will measure how many people are playing and what ads they are seeing at a given time. Nielsen Media Research, like Adweek, is a unit of The Nielsen Co.
… Advertisers will be charged a $30 CPM (cost per thousand). For the launch of the game, all of the advertising was either Sony related—”High Velocity Bowling now available in the PlayStation Store”—or faux ads (Moonriver Proctology). By the end of next year the company hopes to have 20 games that can handle this type of advertising.
Ugh, ugh, ugh. Microsoft is able to track how many people are playing via Xbox Live and Achievements, and you’re not going to see Nike ads in Undertow or Castle Crashers - there’s no need to spy on what people are looking at. The worst people have to endure is a free Toyota advergame.
Then again, Sony isn’t exactly new at trying to include spyware.
(Thanks, P3F.)
December 5th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Ugh ugh ugh … Microsoft has in-game advertising on virtual vans and digital billboards in “Splinter Cell: Double Agent” and “Crackdown” and possibly a few more I haven’t played.
December 5th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Um, no. That’s Ubisoft, not Microsoft, and they do it for ALL their games. Name an Xbox Live Arcade title with in-game advertising, much less spyware.
(Erm, save Yaris, which is an advergame.)
December 5th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Um, no…it’s nothing new to gaming at all. Crackdown had it equally as much, and who really cares so long as it’s not invasive. It works OK in PAIN because it’s an urban city with (gasp) billboards!
It’s hardly spyware…
December 5th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
“Crackdown” is an UbiSoft title, last time I checked it was a Microsoft Game Studios title? And no, UbiSoft is not doing it in ALL their games (Or did I overlook a giant billboard somewhere in Damascus last night?).
But okay, if we look at the Arcade games alone there is none … yet.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Splinter Cell is an UbiSoft title. Crackdown is a Microsoft title, but 1. I don’t recall in-game advertising, which sort of defeats the purpose, huh? and 2. I’m referring to downloadable games. 3. I’m referring to SPYWARE.
Um, no…it’s nothing new to gaming at all.
Um, spyware would be new, yes. You know, that tracking software that sends information back to advertisers and other parties?
December 6th, 2007 at 12:11 am
What kind of information is send to call it spyware? Let’s see: According to the linked article at AdWeek the Ad-supplier collects data about number of users X playing game Y and looking at ad Z … and then calculating the costs for said ad Z.
So they get my IP because the ad data has to be send somewhere, which is the same case for an ad on the internet.
Then they get the name of the game I’m playing … I actually like that idea, because if I have to see ads I sure want them to fit the genre and or setting of the game. Again, this is no different from the web and its sponsored links on search queries and content specific ads like Google’s AdSense.
So if that’s the information they get (and the resulting geographical position for possible local ads resulting from a GeoIP query) I wouldn’t call it spyware … now would I? As it is common practice on pretty much every web page I visit on a daily basis.
December 6th, 2007 at 1:18 am
Um, how do you know what it’s sending? What they TELL you? Yeah, Sony’s trustworthy when it comes to that sort of thing, right?
December 6th, 2007 at 1:26 am
How are they using spyware? That makes ZERO sense. You’re on a PS3 — it’s not going to track your COMPUTER habits via the console. You don’t know what you’re even talking about anymore. It’s just senile fanboy crap your spewing out of your mouth that amounts to NOTHING.
If I may, your conspiracy theories lately have yielded nothing in your favor and have only resulted in a general dislike of you and the site from other outlets, so I’m going to just ignore the crap you’re pulling out of nowhere.
December 6th, 2007 at 2:42 am
DRM = Watching your every move, man. Get it together, Devin! JEEZ! :I
December 6th, 2007 at 2:51 am
Suddenly, I hear Sting singing, “Every breath you take… every movie you make…”
It’s just too creepy. In game advertising, I suppose, sure, I can handle it if it’s not obtrusive. Uploading my habits as I play? No.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:11 am
DRM = Watching your files every move, man. Get it together, MitchyD! JEEZ!
Aside from that, this site is using Google as an ad supplier, Google itself uses a little server called google-analytics.com to check what can be displayed, what is displayed and how many pageviews an ad gets before it charges a company or pays you via their ad program for showing them.
There is way more tracking going on here across the web than compared to one playing a game, and if you are using a Google account as well like GMail it probably can add a name and some other personal information to an, until then, anonymous statistic ad user, too.
So if one is really that concerned about getting that transparent I have the ultimate solution: unhook your internet and read a book … but than again you probably don’t want your local book store to create a reader profile of you, because they know you, and your buying history, there. Or how do you think they let you know that one of the books you recently bought is getting a sequel if you walk into the store? Some call it ad tracking some call it customer care …
December 19th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
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