Microsoft and comScore: Tracking In-Game Ad Data

Not so much a look at advertising itself but at the systems that track the effectiveness of advertising, Mike Sheilds of Adweek posted earlier today that "Microsoft’s gaming subsidiary Massive Inc. has partnered with Web measurement firm comScore in an effort to bring more standardization to the still-evolving in-game advertising industry."

ComScore offers services much like those sold by Nielsen of television's Nielsen ratings. In-game advertising is still a nascent field, but is rapidly growing as companies become more aware of the growing market that lies in the gaming industry. Even Barack Obama put a campaign ad in a videogame in last year during his run for the presidency (the game, if anyone is curious, was a racing genre title: Burnout Paradise.)

As a small aside, racing games are great venues for in-game ads: they come out frequently enough that there isn't as much concern about being irrelevant in 5 years, and a billboard ad in a racing game is hardly out of place. It doesn't break the 4th wall in the way that putting an Obama ad would utterly murder the suspension of disbelief, in, say, my recent high-fantasy game favorite, Dragon Age: Origins. But, back to the Adweek piece.

As part of the arrangement between the two companies, Massive will now be able to provide advertisers with tangible data on the direct impact of their in-game ad campaigns. Specifically, Massive and comScore have jointly developed a research methodology that will help brands track visits to their Web sites or search queries that result from in-game ad campaigns- -- by matching Massive’s ad-serving data with information from comScore’s existing Internet audience panel.

Interestingly, Nielsen Online, a competitor to comScore, is also trying to get into the market of collecting and distributing information regarding the results of in-game ads.