In-game advertising adding sizzle

The Hollywood Reporter has a long article on In-game advertising. Short story - its big and getting bigger. From the article:

"L.A. Rush," the driving game released last month for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC, Midway signed on 40 partners, "although, with 337 miles of drivable roads, we could have done 400," says Allison. He wouldn't reveal what the deals netted Midway, but disclosed that, in general, "we take as little as $20,000 for a limited placement on up to close to $1 million.”

Paul Kedrosky does the math for us:

"At the low end of pricing, if the company had gone ahead and sold ads on four out of five highway miles, this would have netted Midway $6.4mm — and at the mid point of an average 500k per ad it would have netted the company a smooth $160mm."

Billboards are fine but check out this from "Need for Speed."

"There is a high-performance vehicle -- a hot, souped-up Ford GT -- in the game that players have to go through many, many levels to access. We did a promotion with Castrol in which they delivered the code to unlock access to the car. It was a win-win situation -- in effect, Castrol was gifting the gamer with added content, and was itself excited to be associated with a high-performance vehicle in the game."