In-game ads set to become big business in the coming years
Publisher Activision is working with advertising industry specialists Nielsen to promote in-game advertising, with the two companies planning to supply new tools to advertisers to help them measure the impact of the new medium.
The firms" objective is to provide standard ways of measuring factors ranging from ad exposure and demographics to audience recall - all areas which are poorly explored in the in-game advertising arena, despite the strong growth predictions for the sector.
In launching their new collaboration, the companies also unveiled Nielsen"s latest research into the demographics of the games industry"s customers in North America, which focused on a representative sample of males between the age of eight and 34.
Although the remit of the study was somewhat narrow, its findings will make for encouraging reading for proponents of in-game advertising - albeit rather more worrying ones for those involved in the TV advertising industry.
As long predicted, the increasing popularity of gaming is having a negative impact on time spent watching TV, with videogame players aged between 18 and 34 watching a measurably smaller amount of TV than their non-gaming counterparts.