Yahoo’s plan for free and low cost online gaming
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Yahoo! has announced that Yahoo! Games will offer ad-supported downloadable games from the top casual games publishers. With more than 400 ad-supported games available to users by the end of the year, Yahoo is creating new opportunities for advertisers ad well as enabling low cost and free games for users.
“In game advertising is a win-win for Yahoo! Games, our partners and our users,” said Kyle Laughlin, head of games, Yahoo!. “Yahoo! Games will safely and simply monetize our games experience while providing the best and most popular games free to game enthusiasts.”
In-game advertising allows Yahoo! Games and its publisher partners to better monetize its games offering, provide advertisers access to a coveted demographic of gamers and satisfy user demand for casual ad-supported games.
According to a 2007 estimate by the Yankee Group, in-game advertising is expected to be annualy a billion dollar business by 2011.
Yahoo has partnered with DoubleFusion and NeoEdge, who will sell and integrate pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll video ads into the Yahoo! Games catalog. Paid downloads without advertising will also be available to users on Yahoo! Games.
At launch, ad-supported downloadable games on Yahoo! Games will be available from top publishers including Alawar Entertainment, Anarchy, Big Fish Games, eGames, Floodgate, Freeze Tag, FreshGames, Funkitron, Gogii Games, GameHouse, Gamemill Publishing, HipSoft, I-Play, iWin, Last Day of Work, Legacy Interactive, Ludia, MumboJumbo, pixelStorm, PlayFirst, Playrix Entertainment, PopCap, Reflexive Entertainment, Sandlot Games, Sugar Games, TellTale Games, TikGames, uclick, Worldwide Biggies and Zero G Games.
SOURCE: Yahoo , Yankee Group
