Indeed video games have a track record of delivering significant audience, which includes the coveted young male demographic. However gamers are a far more diverse lot than that oft-cited stereotype with women coming on strong, accounting for nearly half of Internet game playing and 25 percent of console participation in the U.S. The female representation is even greater in some international markets. Epstein noted, for instance, that in China the gamer gender breakdown is about 50-50 among teens and young adults.

While his resumé is steeped in the gaming biz, Epstein brings an atypical perspective to his new position. Prior to coming aboard Double Fusion this summer, he was co-head of the digital media group of United Talent Agency (UTA), overseeing a wide range of transactions in the gaming, mobile, Internet and advertising technology sectors and serving as a consultant to a number of media startups. Epstein helped to open UTA's San Francisco office last year, marking the first time that a major talent agency had set up a shop in the Bay Area. (UTA continues to maintain its San Francisco office.)

The rationale for the launch was to advantageously place UTA in the heart of the electronic and video gaming market. For Epstein, the UTA experience provided him with a talent agency vantage point, nestled at the intersection of artist representation, filmed entertainment, gaming and the marketing and advertising worlds.

In many respects, advertising in video games today, observed Epstein, parallels "the early days of television when commercials were the equivalent of reading radio ads on TV." But Epstein sees tremendous growth prospects with in-game advertising becoming increasingly sophisticated. "The nature of the advertising will be far different three years from now—even more dramatically different five years from now," he projected.

Whereas the lion's share of in-game ads today encompasses non-clickable graphics, static billboards in city environments and a smattering of video, the norm of the not-to-distant future, said Epstein, will be far more dynamic and relevant. "There will be versatile content with advanced demographic and psychographic targeting so that an ad or message can be presented in the best possible way based on who the individual gamer is and what his or her interests are."

Partnership

A means towards helping to realize advertising gains in gaming could be last month's partnership between Double Fusion and Emergent Game Technologies, Calabasas, Calif. The deal calls for Double Fusion's in-game advertising technology to be integrated as an in-line feature of Emergent's Gamebryo Element game engine and toolkit. The integration will allow developers using Gamebryo to seamlessly incorporate in-game advertising placements from within the Gamebryo environment, just as they might add any other feature to their games. Thus in-game ad technology will be integrated directly into a game engine.

"The earlier a developer begins work on the integration of an advertising campaign, and the more integrated the ad placement process is within the creation of the game, the more contextual and native the advertising will be," said Epstein.

The in-game advertising market could generate as much as $1.5 billion in revenues by 2010. Double Fusion's business entails acquiring the rights to sell game ads from publishers and to be a solutions provider for ad agencies and clients. Now the company is billed as being the largest independent provider of in-game advertising in that high-profile competitor Massive, a technology and ad-serving firm, was recently bought by Microsoft.

By Robert Goldrich - Reported in Shoot Magazine October 06, 2006