Former Sega executives join in-game ad company
Video games seen as next advertising frontier

Mar. 01, 2006 - monterey herald

The opportunity to build advertising inside video games heated up Tuesday as two former Sega executives announced they had joined a company that promises to weave advertising into both video-game landscapes and their embedded communications.

Bernie Stolar, former president of Sega of America, will be chairman of Adscape Media, a Canadian company moving to San Francisco, while Chris Gilbert, former executive vice president of sales, marketing and operations at Sega of America, will be chief executive. Their decision to join the company suggests that there is a lot of enthusiasm among advertisers to put ads into games, since young males and other players are spending more time with games than other entertainment media such as TV or movies.

''This space is in its infancy,'' said Gilbert in an interview. ''It will continue to change and morph. We think it is early and expect rapid growth over the next few years.''

For instance, Gilbert said, consider a game where a player goes to a cell phone store as part of the landscape in the game. The store could have real-world models of cell phones on display, and if the player likes the phone, they could click a button and order one on the spot or step out of the game and go to a Web site for more information.

In another example, he said that players could communicate with friends from inside the game using the game's own messaging system, or conduct online financial transactions while they're still in a game.

Gilbert said that Adscape Media would make money by splitting the ad revenues between itself and game publishers who build the ads into their games. The company's tools work with any game system, whether consoles or PCs.