In-Game Ads Coming To Guitar Hero, Other Activision Games (ATVI)

Another big in-game advertising win for IGA Worldwide, which signed an exclusive, multi-year deal to sell in-game ads on Activision’s (ATVI) PS3 games, starting with "Guitar Hero World Tour." They already had a two-year exclusive deal with EA (ERTS) on the PS3 -- which means they've wrapped up the two biggest game publishers' PlayStation games.

This is bad news for rival in-game ad company Double Fusion, which signed a deal to distribute ads on Sony’s (SNE) own PS3 games, and has some smaller publishers on board -- but hasn't been able to attract deals from publishers the size of either EA or Activision.

In-game advertising -- like mobile advertising -- is seen as a potential growth explosion, but is still mostly hype so far. Worldwide spending for in-game ads is still below $200 million, according to research firm Yankee Group, which expects it to approach $1 billion by 2011. And as AdWeek pointed out earlier this month, that's a nice number for the videogame industry, but still peanuts for the $3 trillion ad industry.

See Also:
EA's 'Madden', Other Games Will Get In-Game Ads On PS3
In-Game Ad Company: In-Game Ads Really Work!
Video Game Ads: Dollars Don't Match Hype