Slashdot Log In
Google Brings Ads To Games, Game Ads To YouTube
Posted by
Soulskill
on Wed Oct 08, 2008 01:54 PM
from the brought-to-you-by-the-letter-g dept.
from the brought-to-you-by-the-letter-g dept.
Reuters reports that YouTube will be partnering with Amazon and iTunes to provide the ability to purchase games and songs that are in or related to YouTube's hosted videos. For example, watching footage from Spore will bring up a link to purchase the actual game through Amazon. The sales revenue will be shared. In related news, Google has launched a public beta for their in-game advertising software based on Adsense. "Google is initially targeting the sweet spot for its technology: games based in Adobe's Flash platform and which run in a web browser with no download. ... [Christian Oestlien, senior product manager at Google] said that Google's advertisers can use the software to insert ads into games or videos for YouTube, making the ads more versatile. Developers of games can use Flash software development kits to designate the points in a game that make an 'ad request.'"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Ads in Games (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in 1999 myself and some friends actually looked at creating a networked gaming infrastructure company, not creating games but focusing on the bit that (back then) games companies really sucked at, the actual software infrastructure required for distributed games. One of the things we proposed in there was the ability to serve targeted advertisements into games.
Trouble was in 1999 that everyone wanted to fund .coms and advertising revenue was just about eyeballs so targeting wasn't required apparently.
Expect this to very quickly go from Flash games into any game that connects to the internet, its a great new revenue stream for companies.
Re:Ads in Games (Score:5, Insightful)
Expect this to very quickly go from Flash games into any game that connects to the internet, its a great new revenue stream for companies.
Why does it have to connect to the internet?
...
Isn't Burger King releasing games [slashdot.org] funded entirely by Burger King with Burger King themes in them? (Did I mention Burger King?)
When I was tiny and we had our first x86 machine, I recall receiving a free 7-up game from the local supermarket that was a 3.5 diskette. You played spot, the 7-up mascot in an Othello rip off against another person next to you or the computer. Is this any different?
Would I be shocked to see ad funded games hitting the shelves? Nope. I wouldn't be surprised to see free discs & downloads of games where a car company makes a racing game or a soda company makes a mario party-ish game
I'm not too hip on this idea though, the last thing I want is more advertisement in my life. They seem like a distraction & waste of time. But since they fund a lot of what I do for entertainment, they're here to stay!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't Burger King releasing games funded entirely by Burger King with Burger King themes in them? (Did I mention Burger King?)
Behold, McKids! [wikipedia.org]
Re:Ads in Games (Score:4, Interesting)
Its not about add funded games its about using games to sell targeted advertisements. All of those billboards in sports games and the "realistic" FPS games, perfect for slapping on an ad targeted just at YOU. Others in the game will see different adverts on exactly the same space.
Advertiser funded is old hat, this is about turning games into virtual billboard environments
Parent
Re:Toyota has done this (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised to see free discs & downloads of games where a car company makes a racing game
You wouldn't be surprised to know that Toyota did this with their Yaris [xbox.com] game. It is a free download on Xbox Live.
The problem is that if you got it for free you still paid too much. I'm not saying that this type of thing can't work, I'm just saying that this particular example was a bad game.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Isn't Burger King releasing games [slashdot.org] funded entirely by Burger King with Burger King themes in them? (Did I mention Burger King?)
It's a fine establishment! Plus, did you know that you can get a refill on any drink? For free!?!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
another great way to target advertising at kids. get 'em young as they say.
it's rather sad that most American school children are more familiar with corporate brands [commercial...ldhood.org] than they are with academic concepts like arithmetic or geography.
advertising is not something we need more of in our society.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't you wish you had patented the idea.
Well if you don't, I still wish I had.
Don't ruin the immersion (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I have a breaking point. When Sony Online Entertainment put Jeep ads in Planetside (an alternate galaxy futuristic MMO FPS), it was my breaking point and I quit my subscription. I didn't buy Battlefield 2142 for the same reason: the ads ruined the gameplay immersion.
Ads are OK if they fit into the environment. Otherwise, leave them out. I would rather pay $10 additional to not have gameplay tarnished by ads that stick out like a sore thumb.
Re: (Score:2)
They almost never work well for me.
Some just stand out. The Honda Element in SSX 3 was just sad. It stuck out like a sore thumb, and shouldn't have been there.
The objects in Pikmin 2 fit in pretty well, but I think I would have been happier if they were greeked instead of having the real brand names on them. Finding the Duracell and seeing Olimar's little comment was cute, but any battery that looked like a Duracell would have worked, we didn't need the real brand name.
People can debate over ads in sport
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with you 100%. Games are about immersion. I loved fight night games. Fight night 3 pissed me off. The bk guy as your corner man? This knockout brought to you by bk? Fuck you! It actually made me start hating BK. Now, under armor? Underarmor is a boxing brand, right? No problem. I can buy nike shoes and underarmor mouth guards that are actual products. Sort of immersing, isnt it?
Problem is advertising as you said only is immersing in present day games. They could prob do a future setting brand logo
Re: (Score:2)
You're correct; product placement is somewhat more palatable in theory, but I've yet to see a game that had product placement where the placement didn't also suck (Splinter Cell's Sony Ericsson=ummm, what?).
Obviously, gamers' opinions will change when some major ad company (Google, maybe) gets behind an AAA
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The really strange thing about all of this. There is absolutely no real way of validating that the adds were of any value or that they had opposite effect and actually put people off. The big thing is not to sell products but to convince sellers that the adds work and that they buy the space.
So you can imagine the sales demo, where the people selling add space demonstrate the screens where the adds appear and waffles on how the gamer must focus and see the add, of course the naive person buying the add s
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly.
The second players are going to start tolerate ads in loading times, then it'll be the green light for the gaming industry to place loading times at every opportunity and slow down loading times for ads to be "more effective".
Bad, bad bad.
Re:Don't ruin the immersion (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Don't ruin the immersion (Score:5, Funny)
"Bilbo! Don't sit on the verge like a lump; we must make haste!"
"I'm sorry, Gandalf, but my poor feet aren't meant for such a long journey outside the Shire."
"When my feet ache from a long day's journey, I find relief in Gold Bond medicated powder..."
Works for me. :D
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The Burger King blurb in Iron Man was done very well. It worked with the Tony Stark character they put out and I didn't find any problem believing that Mr. Stark wanted a couple juicy BK Whopper's after getting back from a diet of bad water and who knows what he ate.
That's the whole thing, the advert has to work within the context. They could have put ads on billboards in GTA4 and it wouldn't have bothered me.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You can fit a Burger King [ad] into Iron Man and play it off as a quirky character moment, but you can't really shill for, well, anything in something like The Hobbit.
Indeed, that's one of the things that ruined my enjoyment of sequels to The Neverending Story: fantasy characters talking about microwave ovens.
Could be ok (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to see it done right. Seeing as how google really took advertising away from the banner ad approach with the dominance of their contextual text ads, perhaps they will get this in-game advertising right.
What is right?
1) Don't interrupt me. Really. Figure out how to work it in, but not weigh it down or intrude.
2) Make it useful. I don't care for how it looks cheesy when you go to a vending machine in a game and all it has is fake product garbage. Normal advertising you encounter daily, like vending machines, is unobtrusive but also raises brand awareness while it provides some realism to the game.
3) Again, don't interrupt me. Stay out of the way, and a whole industry won't crop up around you trying to remove your ad content. (popup blockers)
Bottom line, I don't think ads coming into games is that bad of a thing, but they have to be done tastefully and not detract from the title your playing.
As Seen in World of Warcraft... SPIDER EGGS (Score:4, Funny)
EXT. Stonetalon Mountains (North West of Orgrimmar)
ENTER: Mackror the Mighty Orc Huntar
Mackror (yells): "I HAS CAPTURED 9/15 SPIDAR DEEPMOSS EGGS!!! FEW MORE TO GO!!!"
[ENTER: Homing Pigeon]
(makes pigeon crap on Mackror, sputters around... and lands on Macror's shoulder)
Mackror: "ARGH WAT! A NOTE!" (reads note)
"AIG Insurrance of Ogrimmar!!!! HAS GOLD. Invest to protect your new QUEST ITEM: DEEPMOSS SPIDER EGGS from decay and theft. Insure your home with the most ROCK SOLID insurance company in all Kalimdor!! We would never need to be bailed out like other institutions."
Mackror: "ARGH NO!!! LIARS!!!!!" (eats bird)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
"Bottom line, I don't think ads coming into games is that bad of a thing, but they have to be done tastefully and not detract from the title your playing."
This is really key, I really hope they don't screw it up but knowing the asshats that run game publishers...
They have to be in good taste and fit the context, although I really wonder about the context of having ads in say like WoW or other fantasy games when technically it's a 'pre-technological' world.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Get ready for the Themed ads. Are you in a fantasy setting? Get ready for ye old Coke Ale. O.k. really only "true" old style beer and their ads should show up there. I have no idea what that would be. Anything from the early 1920s up could have all sorts of old style coke ads. Heck, Coke could make a massive list of their entire ad history and the various times each has run. Then they'd re-run those same ads in each of the games set in each era. If you have a 1960s game, you get 1960s coke ads. If the game
Re: (Score:2)
It's a game set in a modern city (be it a comic book-type one), they're advertising is opt-out (there's an option in game to turn it on/off, effective next time you zone -- it defaults to on, so it's technically opt-out), and the advertisements are only applied to things that were fake-brand advertisements beforehand (the original city design has billboards in all the main parts of the city, and posters at ground level, at about the right kind of mix and frequency to be realistic.
games to ads? (Score:5, Funny)
DRM 1 Star Mob (Score:5, Insightful)
Ouch. Amazon might not be the best place to try and sell spore...
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Ads and MMOs (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember: In-game ads != during gameplay ads (Score:2, Interesting)
Nearly every discussion of in-game ads works under the assumption that in-game ads means ads plastered all over the game world.
This is true in some cases, but is a narrow view of the in-game ads concept as a whole.
There is a lot of real estate for ads to inhabit that is outside of the game world. Start-up screens (wedged between the ten different developer/publisher/middleware/etc splash screens). Menu areas (like the Samsung logo in the Perfect Dark Zero menus). Loading screens (like the Red Bull ones in W
Re: (Score:2)
And then there are people like my aunt who doesn't even remove the sticker from the lid of her laptops. There are all kinds of people... advertising inside games will be quite successful with many, many people. Especially the online flash browser games.
If my Pizza Hut and WoW accounts could be linked.. (Score:2)
I would be an even more happy gamer.
Google's too big (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm finding another search engine. I know it sounds like an over reaction- but the way I figure it, the more funding google gets the more money it has to inject into tracking us and injecting ads into every possible place. I understand that whatever engine I use they're gonna spend money on trying to sell me something, or make something I will buy in the future- but I'd prefer to give my views to someone spending their money on something else. Naturally it's not gonna be microsoft- but its certainly not going to be google.
The question is: is it too late?
Anyone who uses mozilla uses google, google is now a VERB, they own youtube, and they serve ads on virtually every web page. On top of that, they're getting a base of users for their browser AND they have a suite of office applications.
People started saying when is too much a long time ago, well I think now.
Ads in games != cheaper games (Score:2)
If you don't believe me, look at movies.
The (more recent) James Bond movies are classic examples of where there is a lot of product placement (= advertising), especially with sports cars and then take a movie where there can be no product placement, like say "300".
A lot more people watched the last James Bond movie than 300, yet I don't recall it costing any less to see it at the cinema or buy it on DVD than for less than 300.
So will it be the same for games - the ads will appear but they will not cost any
Revenue shared between WHO? (Score:5, Interesting)
"The revenue will be shared"
between amazon and google. GREAT!!!!
then what's left will be given to the publisher who will make some deductions then give a small chunk to the developer.
Enough of this crap.
If you like a game, ANY game, then do the games industry a favour, and CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN. Many of the games on sale through online stores are also sold direct from the developer. If they offer that as an option, please take it. The developer will get between 2 and five times as much money from the sale. And you KNOW they got paid.
Middlemen are making more money from gaming than the developers who create them. This kind of bullshit is getting worse and worse.
Marketing for Free (Score:2)
To answer my own question,
yes, Slashdot is the marketing arm of Google now. [slashdot.org]
How much does Google pay you guys for this kind of coverage?
could be cool (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I actually take the strategy of not buying products that are advertised, or alternatively buying products that are advertised the least. I hope this catches on, because we are constantly being inundated with this crap.
Re: (Score:2)
This is what I do as well.
But I'm not precise about it, nor do I try to take into account what parent company a product belongs to or whatever.
Re: (Score:2)
Or by replacing the ads with their ASCII logos and scene videos/music.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And don't be stubborn just to prove your point, I will know if you are lying.
Honestly, I would buy the more expensive one if it had no adverts, if those were the prices. I really don't like them, and I've avoided games with in-game adverts before and quit playing games I'd bought when they had advertising added (Counterstrike on Steam).
Realistically though, if they did that there'd be a full-price version with adverts and overpriced version without, rather than an actual saving by going with the ads. In that case, I'd probably just pass up the game.
Re: (Score:2)
I understand that a business' only objective is to profit, but there seems to be no end to the greed.
I have been purchasing and playing video games since the 70's straight through until as recent as last week. You know as well as I do that this will really get out of hand and f
Re: (Score:2)
Uuuggghh!
What do you mean, uuughh? I don't like ads!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)