Massive’s Jay Sampson Talks Interactivity, Competition in In-Game Advertising

Thu, Aug 7, 2008

We'll be honest -- when we called up Massive Incorporated's Jay Sampson, we were entirely preoccupied with destructible advertisement's... well, massive potential.

But after we blew that story wide open, we still had one very receptive vice president of global sales on the line -- and we weren't about to let that captive audience off the hook without asking him a few questions about the present and future of in-game advertising.

Jay Sampson Massive Though Sampson fielded questions about possible competition from Google, integration with Games for Windows - LIVE and more, we feel that our discussion of interactivity in particular couldn't come at a better time. Just yesterday, Massive announced a new campaign in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 that allows gamers to participate in a virtual scavenger hunt.

GameCyte: Are there any other ways you expect ads to become interactive in the near future, rather than just being plastered on walls and billboards?

JS: Video ads – in some of our environments, typically in the save zone of a game, as the gamer approaches a video-enabled billboard, they will trigger the video to roll. That’s a level of engagement, right? You had to stare at it long enough, and the camera angle had to be proper, for the game to know that it has to render a video commercial.

That’s one example, but we’ve also done truly interactive ads. There’s an example in Anarchy [Online], again in the save zone, where if a gamer went up and touched the ad, or potentially shot it, another ad would appear. But that’s just kind of first-phase…

Another approach to interactivity in ads, the third example I’ll give you, is that we have seen some marketers -- including the aforementioned McDonalds and Subway – begin to use text or vanity URLs in their advertisements to try to drive traffic to their brand.

GameCyte: How does that work, exactly?

JS: I’ll give you the McDonalds example. McDonalds is a very smart marketer, right? Big marketer. Their agency OMD Chicago ran across our network when they were pushing the dollar value menu, and McDonalds had done something really smart – they had gone to IGN, and basically bought up the cheat codes area. They sponsored it, in essence. What McDonalds then did in-game, with Massive, was have the game acknowledge the ad content. If you were playing MLB 2K7, it would say “Hey big hitter, go to McDonalds and get the Dollar Value Meal,” and it would also have a vanity URL that would point to IGN so you could get your cheats.

So the gamer thinks it’s cool, right? Because now even though cheats are a couple bucks [unless you crowdsource them – Ed.] they’re actually getting that value from McDonalds for simply engaging with the ad.

GameCyte: And there’s that period of time after they get up from the machine and before they get to the computer when they’ve got to memorize that URL…

JS: It’s great, because not only did they take the time to read the ad, but they actually took another action out-of-medium to engage with that marketer.

From our perspective, and certainly from the perspective of the marketer, if the gamer’s going to go to that length to engage with the brand, you’ve got a pretty good prospect and/or customer.

GameCyte: There was a study Massive conducted in June – that is to say, for which you released the results back in June, that indicated that gamers don’t mind in-game ads. Personally, I don’t mind in-game ads when they are used in realistic, modern-day context, but I’m wondering – is there any worry that hardcore gamers attracted to other types of games might be put off by your advertising?

JS: In essence, we green-light every title that comes into our network, and the first governance point of any game considered for our network is, “Is it ad-relevant?” I’m not – and I know someone else did – but I’m not going to put ads in Battlefield 2142. What marketer knows what their brand is going to be like a couple hundred years in the future? Wouldn’t a gamer look at that as kind of suspect? Why is there X marketer/brand in this game talking to me about a current-day product when I’m really supposed to be in the future?

There are great games that just aren’t ad-relevant, that draw a large audience, and we’d love to figure out how to bring that audience to our network, but if the game environment itself isn’t that relevant, it won’t be on our network.

GameCyte: Has Massive considered vintage advertisements that reflect modern brands, like we’re seeing Double Fusion do with Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway?

Phillips Factory Bros in Arms Hells Highway ""

JS: Someone was asking me about that just yesterday… We have not. That would be an interesting sale, but I would imagine it would be a bit challenging. For me, I’d rather focus our time and energy on big games that drive big audiences; that are ad-relevant and therefore appealing to large brand marketers. That’s not to say that’s going to be the case in all circumstances with vintage settings, but I think that [vintage advertising] is one hurdle that may make it more difficult to make ads profitable in that particular game.

GameCyte: How do you feel about Google’s plans to enter the in-game ad market?

JS: Well, I haven’t read much about it. They bought a company – what, almost two years ago – and we haven’t really seen them do much with it yet. That said, I’d welcome great competition. We’re trying to grow a medium here, and in order to grow a medium you really need to have a strong competitive set. If we’re the only ones doing it, we’re just one hand clapping. We really need strong competition, and companies like Google -- and companies like Microsoft, which has acquired Massive -- are strong enough and have enough fortitude to understand what you need to develop a new medium. And if Google’s going to pick up the pace, and start joining us, I think it’s great, because good competition drives business.

GameCyte: On that note, are you working with any of your competitors to develop unified metrics for these advertisements?

JS: We’re working with the IAB, who in turn is working with our competitors, and for that matter our publishing partners. The IAB Games Committee is addressing standardization of impression metrics right now – we’re in discussions on that. It’s a critically important piece, to my business specifically, because if you don’t have standards it’s one additional hurdle for the marketer to leap over in buying this medium. It’s very important, and as such we stand firmly behind the IAB and their efforts to come to standards.

GameCyte: Does Massive have any opportunities to advertise on Sony or Nintendo consoles?

JS: We haven’t… Massive focuses on PC and console, and in our case console means Xbox 360. We’ve had discussions with Sony and will continue to have discussions with Sony – to date they have signed IGA to deliver to some of the EA titles. To my knowledge, Nintendo has not yet arrived at dynamic in-game advertising. That’s not such a bad thing – keep in mind that brilliant console the Wii is really the first of its kind – and so I imagine that their laser focus is on getting great games attached to the console and getting great functionality like the Wii Fit. I think they’ll arrive some day, but they’re not there yet.

GameCyte: Lastly, I wanted to ask about the future of in-game advertising. How advertising might become even more interactive, or link machines and products more directly. Where do you see in-game advertising going from here on out, and how do you feel Massive is contributing to those developments?

JS: It’s certainly growing… it’s growing in acceptance by advertisers, it’s growing in acceptance by their agencies, it’s growing in acceptance by gamers... I think the next evolution in in-game advertising will be additional targeting techniques. Right now, really the only ways you can target within a game are contextual targeting and geographic targeting. But over time, particularly in an environment like that of the Xbox 360, you’ve got a Gamertag which is associated to a credit card, which in theory has a person behind it, and so you start to know – although we’re not doing this today – if you were to append that sort of data to gameplay, you could target based on some of those criteria.

We’re not there yet – there are a lot of privacy issues that we have to work through – but I think the next iteration will be beyond just the contextual and geographic targeting we do today, and be able to get the right message in front of the gamer at the right time.

Adidas F50 Tunit

Wouldn’t it be cool if you were playing Pro Evo Soccer, and you hit such a level of efficiency in the game that because of that you get remunerated by the marketer – let’s use Adidas – with all new unis? That would be nirvana. Gamers would love it because they’re getting the latest and greatest merchandise, the marketer would love it because now they’ve got a virtual customer for their product, and of course we’d love it because it would be the next level of engagement.

GameCyte: One last thing that just came to mind: Microsoft is placing new emphasis on Games for Windows - LIVE. Do you expect Massive will do more advertisement in GFW - LIVE titles?

JS: Where they're ad-relevant, absolutely. We work closely not only with the Xbox team -- in fact, our code is actually within the console -- but also with Microsoft Game Studios, and if it's ad-relevant we want to be in it.

GameCyte: Are there any talks to move Massive code into GFW - LIVE as a platform?

JS: Not that I'm aware of. That's not to say there aren't, but not that I'm aware of.

Feel like something's missing? Perhaps you missed all the destruction. Check out part one of our interview, covering destructible advertisement in Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, right here.