Sony opens up PS3 advertising

Sony's opening up of its in-game advertising platform will spark a battle among Double Fusion, IGA and AdScape.

According to an Advertising Age article, Sony will offer an open platform on the PlayStation 3, allowing the three key players in the in-game advertising market to strike deals with game publishers.

Sony already has its own PlayStation Network sales force to sell dynamic ads in Sony-produced games such as Pain.

"Making things open only makes things better for marketers or people who want to place ads because they aren't the mercy of a given network," eMarketer senior writer James Belcher told Advertising Age.

"Everyone's playing around with the best model - how to charge, what gamers will and will not put up with."

Sony's open platform on PS3 is a departure from Microsoft's Xbox 360, which requires all dynamic in-game ads to be brokered through Massive - a company that Microsoft acquired in 2006.

Sony signed a deal with Nielsen last summer to measure in-game advertising and hired Darlene Kindler, formerly of AdScape, to oversee its in-game advertising efforts with an emphasis on Home.

Advertising Age values videogame advertising at USD 400 million and expects it to grow during the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 23 per cent.