Microsoft to Do Ads in Blizzard Games

Video game advertising company Massive, owned by Microsoft, just struck a deal of name-appropriate proportions with Blizzard Entertainment.

The two companies have agreed to a multi-year advertising deal that will span throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, South Korea and Australia.

This doesn’t mean that you’ll start seeing billboards peppered all throughout your nightly raids, as the advertising deal specifies that Massive will deliver ads to Blizzard’s websites and Battle.net.

Blizzard said explicitly that this deal would not mean in-game ads. “This partnership does not include in-game advertising, as Massive understands and respects our stance against advertising that might detract from gameplay or offend our players,” said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment.

On Battle.net will be players who are still putting time into the older StarCraft, Warcraft and Diablo series of games, but expect traffic to ramp up in a big way with the release of StarCraft II and Diablo III.

Massive will also serve ads on Blizzard’s websites, which we assume gathers a considerable amount of traffic with the 11 million subscribers to its insanely popular World of Warcraft online role playing game.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
  • hellwig
    Whew, when I read the title, I thought they meant in-game ads. I don't see whats wrong with advertising games on gaming websites. Blizzard has such a limited, yet immensly popular collection of titles, I don't see why they wouldn't want the extra cash, and Massive isn't really competition.
    Reply
  • jhansonxi
    Simple solution: Firefox + Adblock Plus
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
    Reply
  • aevm
    If everybody uses Adblock, then eventually there will be no free useful content on the Internet. Somebody has to pay for the service, and advertisers will not do it any more.
    Reply
  • nekatreven
    jhansonxiSimple solution: Firefox + Adblock Plushttps://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
    No one asked how to block the ads, or even looked at it from that perspective. Not to mention that if they were in-game ads, Adblock wouldn't do jack shit to stop it.

    Its funny how you come on this site (which I'm surely is largely if not wholly funded by ads) and read content for free, but then make some asinine comment like you're fightin' the man with your Adblock Plus.

    The vast majority of all free content online is Ad sponsored... I've used Adblock too and there sure isn't anything wrong with it, but it really ticks me off when people spout off like they've just changed all our lives by blocking our Ads... like we're just not with it enough to know that Adblock has been there for years now. Its old news and no one cares.

    Besides, if your goal was to share with everyone how to get rid of the Ads, you might as well just go into your hosts file and point Google, Yahoo, Toms, and millions of other sites to localhost, cause if everyone did this...the only free thing on the net would be Linux...and by now even thats practically just online advertising for the paid support and server distros you can buy.
    Reply
  • jhansonxi
    nekatrevenNot to mention that if they were in-game ads, Adblock wouldn't do jack shit to stop it.
    "This doesn’t mean that you’ll start seeing billboards peppered all throughout your nightly raids, as the advertising deal specifies that Massive will deliver ads to Blizzard’s websites and Battle.net."

    As the article states they are not providing in-game advertisements.

    Dial-up users have a different perspective of advertisements since they account for more than half the data transferred on most any web page. Even on broadband I don't appreciate pop-up and pop-under advertisements.
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  • falchard
    If they are going to put adds on the website, then they should drop the subscription fee by $5.
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  • Claimintru
    11 Million x $5 = $55 Million lost a month due to your moronic idea. If I was Blizzard I'd totally do it.
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  • nekatreven
    I'm aware they aren't in game. That was meant hypothetical.

    I also said I don't think there is anything wrong with it. Dialup users probably do benefit tons, it speeds up browsing even for broadband users, and it is in fact great for mischevious ads.

    I'm just getting sick of the fact that every single time there is an article that has anything to do with ads someone spams their crap about adblock, usually as if its the second coming.

    This article nor any of the comments above yours mentioned a desire to block the ads, and it just seemed a little cocky with your being all "Simple solution:" like we didn't already know how to solve this problem that...well, we even didn't seem to have.

    The Internet as it is runs on ads and no one cares who doesn't like it. No ads, no money; no money, no content...its not real difficult.
    Reply
  • bf2gameplaya
    nekatrevenThe Internet as it is runs on ads and no one cares who doesn't like it.
    And nekatreven is foaming at the mouth to get a piece of the ACTION. You can't wait to be rolling in all the blow and hookers you can handle, right?

    Advertisers are parasites, the internet did just fine without them and will continue to do so. In fact, large portions of the internet were off-limits to commerce, but parasites are difficult to fully eradicate unless you keep a constant watchful eye...and they love hookers and blow.


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  • kittle
    jhansonxiSimple solution: Firefox + Adblock Plushttps://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865AdBlock FTW.
    without that I wouldnt be able to tolerate tomshardware - say nothing about other sites.

    yes us broadband users have the bandwidth for downloading the adds, but what about the cpu time and gpu time spent blasting said adds all over the webpages? IMO thats the REAL slowdown from advertising.
    Reply