Microsoft’s Massive Ad Game: Is Google Playing?
Is digital gaming really “solving” the world’s problems? Unlikely, but the world’s gamers are serving to bolster Microsoft’s advertising fortunes, not those of arch rival Google.
Suzanne Seggerman, president, Games for Change (G4C):
The current generation of gamers is among the most socially conscious in history. We know from experience that young people are looking for ways to help make the world a better place, and who better to support this effort than an industry leader like Microsoft?
G4C describes itself as: The primary community of practice for those interested in making digital games about the most pressing issues of our day.
Where does Microsoft fit in the G4C game? Microsoft and G4C are jointly “exploring new ways to bring together the world of digital gaming with the world of social change,” as announced at the fourth annual Games for Change Festival underway at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City.
Specifically: Microsoft is sponsoring a “socially minded” global gaming competition, dubbed the Xbox 360 Games for Change Challenge. The worldwide competition will kick-off this summer with college students invited to come up with the best game based on the theme of global warming.
The students are to develop games based on global warming using Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express software.
Prizes include cash to be applied towards college education expenses winner’s education and the opportunity for winners to visit Microsoft to present their entries to the Microsoft games management team for possible inclusion as a download in the Xbox LIVE Arcade service. The first-place team or individual will also be able to apprentice at Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business as part of its internship program.
What about Google’s “Interactive Entertainment Business”? It is apaprently still MIA, despite the Google purchase of AdScape, touted as Google’s “massive” in-game advertising play.
Google vs. Microsoft in digital gaming advertising? How Microsoft’s Massive and Google’s AdScape stack-up:
Google: Recent acquisition of AdScape, described as a San Francisco-based “small in-game advertising company” offering technology to dynamically deliver advertising with plot and storyline integration.
Business Outlook: Does Google already have deals signed with game developers?
Google in announcing the acquisition: “We have been in discussions with many in the game development community and hope to partner with both large and small game publishing companies.”
Price tag? Rumored at $25 million.
Microsoft: Acquisition of Massive a year ago, described as a “world-leading network for video game advertising” to help deliver dynamic, relevant ads across Microsoft’s online services, starting with Xbox Live and MSN Games.
Headquartered in New York with offices in London, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, Sydney, Cologne and Toronto.
Business outlook: Katherine Hays, Senior Director of Operations at Microsoft, and a co-founder of Massive, reporting to Microsoft investors recently:
Massive is the leading in-game advertising company. Our experience to date spans over 200 advertiser campaigns which we have aired across the network for more than 100 blue chip advertisers. Robust technology and operations, the Massive Network has been live and serving campaigns to the gaming audience for over two years, and a large network of game publisher and partners. Massive has over 50 game titles live in the network today.
Massive aggregates the gaming audience to enable advertisers to, for the first time, broadcast real-time advertising simultaneously across multiple video games, whether played on the console or PC. This is made possible through our technology, and back end operations which were built from day one to be platform agnostic, and therefore have the capability to aggregate the single largest gaming audience worldwide.
Massive is a thought leader in the industry, driving measurement standards and accountability, and working with industry players, such as the IAB to help set standards and grow the end game advertising market overall, for example, by working towards providing third party audited data in the coming year.
Connectivity is driving, for example, Xbox 360 has six times the connectivity rate of prior platforms, which drives a very sticky experience for audiences. As of March 2007 there were more than 6 million users connected through Xbox, representing over 2.3 billion hours of game play.
Price tag? Rumored at $300 million.
How do Massive and AdScape fit in the overall Microsoft vs. Google ad game?
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has a fantasy, a world wide advertising domination fantasy: “The long-term fantasy is we walk up to you and you give us, say, $10 million and we’ll completely allocate it for you’ across different media and ad types.” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer aims to have a $6 billion advertising agency reality, however: aQuantive.
Why does Ballmer trump Schmidt? Avenue A | Razorfish product beats a Google “advertising dashboard” spin.
Massive has a solid (Microsoft) track record with real business traction; AdScape has a (Googley) start-up dream.