Acclaim signs deal with advertising network Massive

Earlier this week, we announced our partnership with the advertising network, Massive Incorporated. (You can read the release at their site here, you can also read 1up.com's take on it here)

Massive is an interesting company. They're the middlemen between advertisers and game makers. They have technology that allows ads to be placed and tracked in games and they're building up a portfolio of solid games and advertisers that want to be in those games. For example, the Diet Sprite ad you see to your right was in Splinter Cell.

Given that we're going to be providing all our games for free, it makes a lot of sense to partner with Massive for our games that will use advertising. From an advertiser point of view, it's a one stop shop to reach their consumers. From our point of the view, we can reach advertisers that are familiar or at least acceptable to advertising in games.

So far, most in-game advertising can be found in games purchased retail. That is, someone bought the game and if they play online, they see ads. In contrast, we offer our games for free and people see ads. I can't speak for Massive but I think we're a great partner for them because we are exploring new territory here and it might just trickle back up to other publishers if this works. Now that's good and bad since I don't really want more competition for us. However, as a consumer, I like to choose between free by ads or pay.