Thursday, March 22, 2007

Google + AdScape + Linden Labs

Im going to cheat a little here when talking about the media landscape simply because i think the media landscape will be tranformed by multiple companies in a simliar arena.

Let me digress. Google just completed the acquisition of a company called AdScape. Why is this interesting? Adscape is a company that serves dynamic ads to people playing video games.

You thought by plugging into the xbox you were getting away from real life? Hardly. With connectivity in these things, you might as well be trolling the net. Now, the king of online advertising has a whole new way of connecting/reaching/harassing you (playing devils advocate) especially if you believe the theory that the high tech consoles are moving out of the bedrooms and are becoming focal points in an households family room.

Take the uptake of Linden Labs' 2nd Life, and the way that companies are advertising there and you can see how it might be theoretically that a company spends most of its money advertising in games. How strange would that be if one company abandoned traditional outlets and decided that video games were the key to success. (Can someone please call my mom and explain how i didnt waste my youth)

Do you think Madison avenue can handle this? Or will there be a continuance of new advertising companies and models which will rule the future.

Just a thought

2 comments:

Gordon Rowe said...

I agree with Steve about the selection of Adscape, but I don't think the companys impact will be limited to video games. They may be the first wave of "implanted" advertising, but what's to stop a company like adscape from incorporating their technology into digitally distributed movies? I think the ability to dynamically insert product placement and other advertisements will expand from video games into all other types of visual media, from billboards to movies, and google will be the company to beat in this space.

Tom Hamilton said...

This is already hapenning in ohter types of visual media. SeachChange offers the AdPulse platform for dynamically inserting advertising into video on demand. GigaVox offers the Audio Lite platform for podcasts. dMarc (recently acquired by Google) does the same thing for radio.