Massive Adds 14 Games to In-Game Network

Massive has signed 10 new Xbox games and four PC-based games to its network of in-game advertising clients since last October, bringing the total number of publishing partners to over 40, and the number of titles available to advertisers to over 100.

The new games, which range from sports titles like “Major League Baseball 2K7,” to driving games like ‘Need for Speed Carbon,” to military style shooters like “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas,” provide a range of diversity that advertisers want to choose from when placing their brand, according to Alison Lange, marketing director for Massive.

“Having that mix of environments is important — finding ways to integrate brands into the experiences,” said Lange.

While Massive was acquired by Microsoft last year and the new game titles utilize Microsoft’s own Xbox and Xbox 360 game platform, Lange insists the company is keen on remaining platform agnostic.

“We want to work and aggregate audiences across platforms and wherever gamers play,” she said.

As Massive expands its roster of games, the company is striving to work with publishers earlier in their development process to integrate video ads as well as static ones, but at the same time wants to assure advertisers that it can provide access to games in as little as a week, said Lange.

“There is a wow factor to this whole industry, and people equate it with product placement and waiting a year to be put into a game, but in this case we can have a client call us tomorrow and have a creative team that can work with us so the onus isn’t on the agency, and we can have a campaign up and running within a week,” she said.