Added Value

Ed Bartlett established the world's first in-game product placement agency, Hive Partners, in 2003, and quickly negotiated deals with the likes of Red Bull, SEGA and Vivendi. That same year, Hive was aquired by in-game ad specialist IGA Worldwide, and Bartlett became vice president of the company's European arm.

IGA has since proceeded to sign a series of high profile agreements, including one with Electronic Arts to place dynamic ads in the publishing giant's latest titles. And the in-game advertising sector overall has continued to grow - according to IGA, it will be worth some US$2.5 billion by 2010.

But what does this mean for both developers and publishers, and are consumers ready to accept product placement in games? GamesIndustry.biz sat down with Bartlett to discuss the answers to these questions. Part one of our interview is published below - visit GI.biz tomorrow to read part two.

Ed Bartlett: We have a unique combination of skills in our management group, both game and advertising executives, which gives us a huge base of knowledge, contacts and experience. When you combine those things and look at some of our investors such as Intel, it makes for a pretty compelling story.

I think we've got the most sustainable approach to the market, particularly our approach in terms of our 360 degree solutions through IGA and also our other, company, Hive, who deal more with product placement and integration. We're able to offer a muich more comprehensive solution.

Advertisers don't want to have to go to different agencies for different parts of the same campaign, they want to go to one agency who can do dynamic advertising, co-promotion and product placement, on all the platforms, and that's what we're trying to do with IGA.

How do you think IGA is shaping up against its competitors in the market, such as Massive?

I think we're certainly the leading independent. Obviously Massive were in the marketplace slightly before us. Being bought by Microsoft gives them an extra level of sales force particularly, whereby they could be considered to be the market leader globally. But in terms of the independent side of things we're certainly the number one player in that space.

We feel that we have some things coming online in the next couple of months which will certainly have us challenging for that number one slot overall.

What's your experience of the reception in-game advertising receives from developers? Is there any sense of resentment from designers who feel that doesn't fit in with why they want to create games?

Very little. Bear in mind that I'm a developer as well. Part of the reason I set this up with Hive originally was so that we could get more revenue to fund games perhaps without getting publishers involved, and retain control of the IP.

The people that we're working with tend to be our peers - people who we've been working with for 10, 15 years or more. They understand that we're not just going to come in and put ads every where that aren't in context with the game.

We've seen some resistance from the smaller independent studios rather than the bigger studios, who are obviously our targets, so generally we're getting a very positive response. When we first go in there's often a bit of wariness but once we show people what we've done, case studies and past work, and once they understand the business model, there's very little push back.

One thing to remember is that publishers get to sign off every advert before it goes live so there's no chance of us pumping adverts for gambling, alcohol or cigarettes in. There are very strict controls, both in the technical process and the sign up process, between us and the IP owner which make sure that these ads won't have a negative effect on the gamer.

So you're saying that in-game advertising can give developers a way to remain independent from publishers?

In some cases yes. We've already seen it in two games we've been involved with - Stoked Rider, which was released as a free download, and Trackmania Nations, the official racing game of the e-sports world cup.

Through our deal with them they've also been able to release that game as a free download. They've gone from the retail copy of the game having only sold tens of thousands to the free download having over 2 million players.

Obviously the more players you have the more ad revenues you get, which makes it almost a self-fulfilling model. By having a bigger audience you bring in more ad revenues which means you can offset the costs even further.

When you look at a big triple-A console release you're never going to be able to offset the entire cost of the release through advertising. But I think with a PC-only release, where you're reiterating a technology which has already been paid for and developed as it was with Trackmania, then I think you're looking at some exciting new models.