When people think of in-game ads, they typically think of ads being inserted into games that have yet to release or MMOs. The in-game advertising industry is still nascent, having just taken off in the past few years. Given the time and effort required to integrate in-game ads into titles, this would seem to limit the number of games in a publisher's library that could be generating revenue from ads.

Exent is looking to change that mentality, however. With their technology, it will be easy to integrate ads into a large back catalog of titles. But why should users agree to this? And why should publishers even bother with their old titles? We chatted with Yoav Tzruya, COO of Exent, to find out.

One of the first companies to come on board with Exent's new in-game advertising technology was Enlight. Several of their titles, including Capitalism 2, Zoo Empire, and Joan of Arc will now feature in-game ads. Exent is looking to make Enlight the first in a line of companies to use their new technology.

"We've been very interested in the additional revenue avenues that in-game advertising offers but thought it would only be possible with future titles," said Trevor Chan, CEO, Enlight. "When we learned that Exent could add in-game advertising to titles that had already been hits at retail without a costly redesign and the need to redistribute, it was an easy decision to sign with them."

"We are thrilled to welcome Enlight as an In-Game Advertising media partner," said Tzruya as part of Exent's press release. "Enlight has the vision to recognize that in-game advertising for new and existing titles allows the industry to create new revenue channels for all the games in a publisher's catalog of titles."

"We have an on going relationship with many publishers," Tzruya told GameDaily BIZ. "We know the key individuals, and they know we have a unique technology to generate revenue. Enlight has really understood the technological difference and the ability to enable their back catalog with in-game ads."

"The thing about Enlight is that they have many interesting games from an advertiser's perspective, and they've been very cooperative from a technological and development perspective," he added. "They'll be one of many we will be announcing in the next few weeks."

What Exent is trying to bring to the table, besides in-game ads in existing titles, is easy to use technology. One of the main issues with in-game ads today is that the technology and the ads require a lot of foresight and development time to integrate, particularly when the games are part of a larger network.

"In-game advertising is a progressive market and has an issue of inventory," explained Tzruya. "When looking to integrate ad SDKs into the game development, there are limits to the amount of game titles that can have in-game advertising. There are roughly 500 million game units played by users, including consoles, casual games, older titles, that are not integrated into the in-game ad SDK."

"We came up with the technology to integrate ads into a game without having to integrate the SDK," he continued. "We believe this is a disruptive technology, because there's almost no cost to ad-enable a game using it. From an inventory perspective, we have a completely different outlook. We can enable games that have already been released or downloaded and installed. We're looking to potentially revolutionize demo games with ad integration as well."

"When does a particular media become interesting to advertiser?" queried Tzruya. "When you think about certain inventories, it isn't all that interesting as a medium. In the U.S. for a website, you need to have at least 5 million uniques per month. Comparatively, the total number of game units sold in the U.S. is only about 35 million, so that's not really appealing to advertisers. So how do we really make games appealing? You need to emphasize all the games the users play. You need to address where putting ads into a game do and don't make sense. There's a right way to integrate ads and still get good impressions."

"For example why should users agree to in-game advertising into a game they paid 60 bucks for at GameStop?" he asked. "There should be an incentive and get the user's consent with ads. There will be ways in the next few months. Were putting together a campaign, where users can win some prizes via the ads. Another example gives customization options. With publishers permission, put the user's face in or a unique soundtrack. You could also add personality, such as putting IM into a title without interfering with gameplay."

One of the main things that Tzruya emphasized was how Exent was looking to work with, not against, other companies—not only developers and publishers, but also other in-game advertising specialists such as Double Fusion, Massive, IGA and others. He hopes that Exent's technology can work with their ad sales teams to make everyone involved a profit.

"We don't compete with Double Fusion, Massive or IGA," stated Tzruya. "If you look at the value chain of in-game advertising, if you have ad sales forces that sell ads for particular games, and that's what those companies do. We see them as partners rather than competitors, because we don't sell ads. We compliment them, we bring them additional inventory they can serve to. We have a unique technology, for Double Fusion, Massive, IGA and web adverting giants."

"For developers, there's no code integrated. They just have to install or enable it, so from that perspective it's very beneficial. As compared to other companies, we do things with users. We don't want to alienate users," he concluded.