After seeing that Konami are streaming advertisements into Playstation 3 games, this stat caught my eye. especially as Google is eyeing up in-game ads too.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has just sold 4.7 million copies in it’s first day in North America and the UK, this equals $310 million in sales. In just one day!

To put that in context, the box office hit Batman – The Dark Knight grossed $158.3 million during it’s opening weekend.

With numbers like that you can bet game companies will look to monetize even further with ads, the trick is mixing ROI with unspoilt gameplay.

[Via Fast Company]

Fired up the Playstation 3 for a quick game of Pro Evolution 2010 online today and noticed something slightly different about it..

It appears that Konami are now pushing banner ads onto the replay screens, which appear whenever you score a goal, get booked or miss a chance. The advert is also on display in the online game set-up menus.

At the moment I could only see one advert for BT Total Broadband with the tagline “Demand the speed you need with BT Total Broadband” which is kind of ironic as the game is famously plagued by lag due to bugs in the development. I can see how an advert for faster broadband could attract potential customers who are suffering from jumpy gameplay but don’t realise it’s Konami’s fault rather than their broadband provider.

Football games like this will undoubtedly attract advertisers who want to reach the 18-34 demographic, plus the amount of time you spend staring at the screen is bound to ingrain any advert deep into your brain. Sadly you can’t interact with the advert, no click through, animation, nothing. It’s a shame because you are in a rich environment so I would expect some wow factor in the advertising.

The trouble I have with this is that the game has some serious issues which at times make it unplayable online. It feels like it’s been rushed out the door and before Konami fix the mistakes, they decide to start pushing me adverts, meaning my feelings towards the advertisers are far more negative. If anyone else out there plays this game let me know what you think.

In-game advertising is developing at a massive rate and expected to be worth $971 million by 2011 according to Yankee Group. Even Google is planning ‘Adsense for games’. I can definitely see the advantages for advertisers compared to online where ‘ad blindness‘ comes into play. After doing some consumer testing on in-game ads this year I found out that adverts in this environment were far more accepted and noticed providing the gameplay wasn’t affected.

The advertising is handled by a company called Double Fusion