April 26, 2006
In a move toward placing strategic advertisements into more of the activities people do online, Microsoft (MSFT) is buying the leader in the field, Massive Inc. which incorporates ads into online gaming and looking at other areas like shopping and social networking.
Currently, online ads that are incorporated into quizzes and games, comprise almost 10 percent of the online ad revenue for last year, coming in at over a billion dollars of the $12.5 billion total spent and is expected to grow in the years ahead. This is according to a report released last week by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Massive Inc. specializes in embedding advertisements into online video games interactively, which has some great potential with its core demographic.
According to a report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, online advertising set a new record last year of $12.5 billion. This is a 30% increase over the previous high of $9.63 billion in 2004.
