• by Shankar Gupta , March 9, 2005

Massive Inc., a video game advertising network, will announce today a slate of major video game publisher deals, including established names like Ubisoft, Vivendi Universal Games, and Eidos.

The Massive network will officially launch on March 28 with the release of the anticipated title "Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory," and the online futuristic role-playing game "Anarchy Online." "Chaos Theory" is the third installment in the already established Splinter Cell franchise, which features a U.S. intelligence agent fighting various global terrorist threats.

Massive's ad network aims to target the elusive male 18-34 demographic, which has increasingly turned to video games for entertainment.

"We're talking about getting to that 18- to-34 demo," said Massive CEO Mitch Davis. "If you want to reach those guys in prime time, there's only one place to do it, and that's video games."

According to a study by Nielsen Media Research, the 18-34 male demographic, while watching less TV, spent about 30 billion hours in 2003 playing video games. And Davis maintains that players recall ads placed in video games better than those on television or in print. "In terms of effectiveness, we've completed three research studies so far," Davis said. The studies show the effect of advertising on brand recall, said Davis, and "[players] notice everything in the game, so they really pay attention to the ads."

Ads placed via Massive's network are similar to product placement in movies. The Massive-served ads will appear whenever it makes sense within the context of the game--when a character walks down the street and sees a billboard, or the banners hanging around a sports stadium, for example. Thus far, the ads are only for posters and billboards, but Davis said that Massive is looking to incorporate video and audio ads as well.

At first, the network will only serve ads to PC gamers; the company aims to launch console titles with ad software in July of this year. At this point, Massive has roughly 40 titles slated to include ads, with exclusive, long-term deals with 12 publishers.

"From a media standpoint that means we can deliver cumulative weekly reach 2-3 million per week," said Davis. "And from a publisher standpoint, we're talking about a regular contribution to units sold of $1 to $2 dollars. So that's pretty powerful for the publishers."

Separately, on Tuesday, Massive competitor IGA Partners Ltd. announced the creation of a North American division, headed by two video game advertising veterans, Andrew Sispoidis and Darren Herman, formerly of inGamePartners, another video game advertising company. Sispoidis will serve as the CEO of IGA Partners North America, while Darren Herman will serve as chief commercial officer. The deal is aimed at allowing IGA Partners to expand their ad network into the U.S. and Canadian video game markets, which were previously focused in Europe.