I was referred by a friend of mine to a site that has a bunch of mashups. Basically a mashup is two songs made into one. Good mashups are hard to find but the guys from The Hood Internet have some good quality ones on their site.
Go check that site out.
I read an article in The Economist and it had some really cool info about the evolving in-game advertising.
With DVRs gaining popularity, the companies are afraid that they are not reaching all of the viewers with their continuous bombardments of our TVs. New ways of reaching the consumer are required and video games are one of the channels that are not yet exploited.
So far companies have been able to place ads in video games, but there is a problem with placing an ad in an environment where the consumer is not forced to look at the ad. For example, you watch the commercials (if you don’t have a DVR) while waiting for the show to continue. You might not pay much attention to them, but there they are in your face and that is what companies care about. In a video game, however, the ads are placed in the environment around you but that doesn’t mean you have to stare at it - after all, you are busy playing the game. If you do, however, look at an in-game ad, these companies want to know that. They want to know if their ad is reaching the audience. There is really no way of knowing whether or not I looked at the Intel ad while blasting away some aliens. Without this information advertisers are unable to create any strategy for their ad campaigns.
So here is the point of this post. Marketing company Neue Digitale, based in Germany, says that they have found a way to help advertisers with their dilemma. Supposedly, they developed the technology that will record players’ in-game actions which will provide very detailed information about the ads that are placed in the game’s environment. Such actions include how many times the players looked at the ad, at what angle, and for how long. If these guys can actually execute what they are promising, I am sure they will be raking in some serious money in no time.