Ethics? Haha I don't think so

I assume there will be several other posts on this topic but I have to put my 2 cent in.
On February 4th Facebook made a unilateral change to its Privacy Policy and Terms of Service agreement. The social networking site changed the legalese on their site to essentially claim right to all user posted content on their site forever. The gist was that even after deactivating your Facebook account your content, information, and pictures would still be at their full disposal to do what they please. For further reference I have found off of Fox News' site Facebook's exact words on the subject.

"You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof."

The founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says this change was only made to "enhance the user experience" but that isn't the whole story, it never is. Zuckerberg stated in his blog post that the changes were made in response to some issues about who controlled content on and linking to their site. If a way for them to clarify what they control on their site is to claim ownership to everything posted then they went a bit far.

There are numerious issues related to copyrighted material on the internet. This is just one of the many early privacy disputes that will end up occuring. Companies like Facebook are just trying to gather as much information up as possible before someone notices. Unfortunately for Facebook people did notice and thanks to public outcry they were force to revert to their old TOS agreement for time being. The ony reason a public outcry worked was because Facebook has not been bought yet. If Google had come in and changed things around I don't know if they ever would have reverted. Facebook's change in agreements said that they had an international fully paid licence to users content. This goes well beyond protecting themselves, they tried to issue themselves a proprietary licence for all content on their site. They wanted unconditional ability to do anything with your picture or what you said to your friend, is this the kind of world were living in?

Yes it is. In todays world information is power and access to the number of consumers Facebook has is considered gold. Companies want increasing amounts of data from all sources on everything from sales to consumer psycho-graphics. Sites like Facebook will be primed sources in the future if they can spin the appropriate amount of legalese in their Terms of Service agreement. What is next are they going to change privacy policy and start tracking peoples every move on their site, on the internet?

The new frontier for legal issues is the internet with its file sharing capability and everyone depositing their personal information on at least one internet site. Ownership of content, privacy rights, copyrights and licensing issues have become the main points of contention for companies on the internet.

The illegal downloading of music is a major issue on the internet but privacy policy is right up there. People's right to keep their information to themselves is at odds with the very companies they patronize. These companies want to know anything and everything about you so they can better sell you their products. Today databases are a valued commodity and your information could be in one of many for sale to the highest bidder or for whoever can afford to pay.

There is even a crack down on illegal downloading in Sweden. An expert testified on behalf of the major music publishers in the United States. He blamed pirating and sharing for the nine billion dollar drop in sales over 7 years for the major record companies. The site "Pirate Bay" is being sued for breaking Swedish copyright law. Illegal downloading is at the forefront of this conflict over ownership on the internet. The music companies are seeking around thirteen million in damages from the people that run Pirate Bay.

Who owns what is a big deal on the internet today with all of the sharing and collaboration going on there can be doubt as to who has the rights to certain material. These issues have started the legal battle over the internet and its effect on copyrights, trademarks, and patents. When referring to something found on the internet it could have travel through many people before reaching the user. These gray areas have allowed file sharing sites to get away with limited amounts of illegal downloading before getting suit or shut down. The future will hold some interesting challenges to a persons right to privacy on the most public medium yet.

Pick your shoe

Both of these companies are trying to capture the idea of mass customization by allowing the shopper to design athletic shoes online. NikeID was the first website that allowed people to customize shoes. There is no real premise behind the idea for Nike, Puma went with Mongolian BBQ. Their premise for shoe design is that your a chef creating the perfect meal and the shoes you design is the equivalent to a good meal. Nike went with the straight forward approach in just letting people cross right over from regular shopping to designing a shoe. The transition works well because many of Nike's shoes are offered in the NikeID customizer.

The Puma creation tool is different. It allows you to select from three different shoe types and then start customizing from there. While Puma may have some cool and original design options i believe that since Nike offers more styles of shoes that it is a better choice for designing your own shoe.

The type of website design for the two companies is basically the same. While they look different they are both flash intensive having a load time required, the organizational layout is also the same. The two website also share a similar format. They both are colorful and well designed flash sites and work well and provide a very positive user experience.

With Nike the idea of designing your own shoe seems to fit in with the experience. It is like a usual extension. You can actually be looking though shoes not on NikeID then see one pre-made that is and ID product. You can load that design, then change one thing, and purchase. Puma you can select pre-made styles but still only on three shoe styles. Nike offers more options for the experience. The Puma design in my opinion feels tacked on as something that might not be around forever. NikeID seems to be pretty standard now on their website. Mongolian BBQ does not inspire me to go design a shoe. For me the process could take weeks to decide on a final product. With a name like Mongolian BBQ why should I expect Puma to keep their designer up indefinitely.

While the websites of these two companies are both generated by their own designers the ability to design your own shoe is an example how internet companies are trying to become more web2.0 with user customization. These companies realize that user generated content could be the future of the business.

This push towards mass customization is the latest idea for companies that are trying to give their customers what they want, and more importantly something original. While the customer experience might be completely different on the two different sites you have to look at what is the same. Besides aesthetics the sites are almost identical. The customization option, the flash intensive sites, the breakdown of sports, these are all similarities between the Puma and Nike websites.

The Nike site also allows the user to do something very cool that the Puma site cannot, save your shoe with a background as an image that can be used as a background. This is an easy way to save your shoe without registering. You just save the image and you have your shoe design saved on your computer. This extension is one of the features for the Nike site.

I believe that the Nike site is better due to that you don't need to leave the web page via a link to design the shoe. Everything is right in front of you when looking at the NikeID site. The Puma site links you over to another page, opening another window. I feel the design of the Nike site just meshes with NikeID and it all works together to provide a great web experience for the user. Also NikeID allows you to customize more then just shoes, there are options for custom made t-shirts and backpacks, options which Puma does not have.

The visual design between the two sites is radically different. The features and options and the breakdown of foot ware shopping are the same but the face they present is different. I prefer Nike's site because of the well designed box formula they have. Everything is contained in the center of the screen and each different item is separated into its own box in the design. With the vibrant colors and high quality images it really does look like a quality rendering. The Puma site is mostly white space with a side bar menu and a few centralized buttons on the screen. While the colors work very well together and the site is not poorly designed but it does not have the "POP!" that the Nike site does, just jumping off the screen into your face. Plus Nike has Kobe as a celebrity endorser in a very entertaining video. They beat Puma hands down.

Dell was 0ne 0f the first companies to offer such wide options for personalization. People can design personal computers and have them shipped to their door. This personalization represent the idea that people want some options in buying their products, they want choice.

End Summary

During the months that we were posting I was able to see in-game advertising really evolve and come into its own as a viable medium for advertising. The in-game advertising audience is also very special because they really a captive audience. On television the channel can be changed, the programs can be recorded, and the viewer can leave the room. Ads can usually be avoided whether they are on TV or on the internet, but the for in-game ads the ad can be either part of the game or a product placement. When playing a game with ads in it, the gamer will not turn off the game just because he sees several ads, while he has the option of looking away and not coming back the audience has already been exposed to the ad. For other advertising mediums the ads can be ignored and the message lost, in-game advertising at least will get the impression from the gamer before he looks away where as in the other mediums the ads were never seen. The reason the impression is counted is because during the game the audience is paying direct attention to what they are doing and that is where the ad becomes effective. The in-game audience is just more captive then any of the other mediums giving it the potential to be very effective per viewing. However with new mediums to advertise in comes the potential to abuse and overexpose the audience with large numbers of ads at one time or constantly. The internet is an example of this, ads are so frequent on the internet the viewers don’t even see the ads anymore and have learned how to ignore them. It may be harder to ignore ads in-game because they can happen to be on a wall you are looking at or appear in front of you with game information on them liked a sponsored half time report. While the ads are harder to overlook it is not impossible for gamers learn or adapt to ignoring them completely. The key is not forcing gamers to do that because of overexposure or abuse of placements in games.

The main difference between in-game adverting and all of the other mediums is that ads featured in games are actually part of the game, the gamer does not stop playing when they are looking at an ad in-game. They could be shooting someone standing in front of a coke machine, get hit in the face with a boxing glove that says Everlast on it, or see an Under Armor banner hanging from the ceiling in the background of a gym; they are exposed to the brand name leaving an impression without leaving the game or taking the attention off of the media. This is the only medium where that is possible for a traditional advertising. It is possible to do to an extent with sponsored information for sporting events and with product placement. When the audiences of the other mediums view featured ads they are being interrupted. When a commercial comes on TV the audience is no longer watching the game, when readers turn the magazine page to a full page ad they are no longer reading the article, when the audience hears an ad on the radio they are not playing music, when web surfers get a popup they are no longer on the site page they were viewing. All of the mediums except games interrupt the audience the ads, while in games the ads are part of the game.

The advertisements can provide a unique effect for the games they are featured in that no other type of medium’s ads can provide for the media they are placed in. The effect is that the advertisements if designed properly, and put in the proper context, can add to the game’s realism positively enhancing the audience’s experience in the game and with the ad. This means the players will have a positive view of the brand instead of just general awareness. The results of ads having a positive impact on the games they are featured in means it is good advertising that is effective while not being hated by the players. Another thing in-game advertising has going for it is that the gamers lack a negative opinion for it that most of the other mediums have a problem with, especially TV. The audience for in-game advertising is not opposed to the idea in fact they support it in some cases. The majority of gamers are in favor of in-game advertising if it means cheaper games while around a third of them would like it if the ads were in context with the game and realistically placed in the setting.

The months that we posted during saw in-game advertising come into its own as a medium. Large companies start to get in on the newest way to advertise. Also critical technology was being developed and released during the period that revolutionizes the way that the ads are placed. The new technology allows in-game advertising to begin to reach its full potential. The technology that I watched be developed and released was called fusion.runtime. The program was a big step forward for the industry now that it is commercially available. It has the ability to place and change ads in games even after they have been coded and released, this includes previously released titles. With this technology there is a new flexibility for the industry that was not previously available. Having the advertising placement and development separate from the design and coding of the games allows ads to be placed and changed at anytime including over the internet making changing in-game ads after an advertising campaign is over easy and simple. Before the development of this program there was no way to change the ads in a game after the release. Fusion.runtime, which was created by Double Fusion an in-game advertising company, is unique because of its ability to place ads in places in game that there were no ads previously. This program really did revolutionize the industry giving it near the same flexibility of television advertising, having the ability to change, add, and remove ads whenever it is necessary. With the release of the program commercially many large companies began to purchase or sign with in-game advertising companies sparking growth in the industry that is projected to continue.

Evil French Moderators

Again the French are trying to ruin it for us all. Despite the fact that they have never won a single war and are dependent on the United States for ALL military support, they now believe they have the right to dictate terms for the online gaming world.

The French lobbying group called the Internet Rights Forum issued guidelines to publishers and legislators about the online gaming world that include their suggestions for moderation on things like the online content of games which includes everything that happens online in games, which is not coved by Europe's version of an ESRB rating. This does including their recommendations for in-game advertising restrictions.

While most of the Forum's concern is that all of the content that is mostly player to player communication in online games goes outside of the rating system. Publisher do not cover online content in their ratings and that is what the Forum believes they are responsible for.

The Forum also wants the rating to apply to in-game advertisements and for the game to have warnings on the package if the game contains ads. Not that ads are anything new in games but with the ability now to change the ads over the internet the Forum in concerned about poorly targeted ads ruining a games atmosphere and that children could be exposed to ad content that is to mature for their age. I fully support the need for context only ads in-games but that is up to the publishers as long as the ads aren't out of place I don't care what they promote.

The Forum's restrictions would be on mostly player chat and forums. This would ruin online games. It is no ones business what I say to who every I am talking to in game. Report me if you want but don't restrict me. I hope everyone who reads this will be with me in telling the French to go stuff it and hopefully soon before and US conservatives get the same idea. Here for more details about the beginning of the end.

Double Fusion launches new technology

Double Fusion a leading independent in-game advertising provider has made its in-game advertising software commercially available. The technology, called fusion.runtime, allows publishers and developers to add advertising support to their titles after the code development has been finished. This new technology makes ad placement possible where it could not be done before. This also includes back titles and titles that are late in the development process. This technology also represents compelling advertising solutions for the casual gaming industry. "The large volume of titles launched each year requires an easy to implement solution reach the market's full potential."

Publishers can now incorporate new ad placements into their titles whether they are new or old. Also after release they can "create additional revenue potential through the development of specialized programs." This new technology allows publishers and developers a new level of flexibility for in-game ad placements that they did not have before. The development of special programs that Double Fusion refers to is also called "just-in-time advertising." According to Double Fusion they can create an in-game object for advertising even if there was previously nothing there.

One example they gave is that if an advertiser wanted to put a 3D branded blimp in the sky across multiple titles for a Fourth of July promotion they could place the blimps in the games even if a blimp was not already in the game. The technology also allows the advertisements disappear after the campaign is over. The reason this technology is so revolutionary is because in the past once a title shipped the ad placements were already locked and could not be altered. This is a huge improvement over the code based solutions. Fusion.runtime opens the door to a much broader, real-time development of custom, dynamically-served game advertising programs."

Popcap tests ads

Popcap which is a leader in casual gaming recently released their results for the research that they did on one of their flagship titles, Zuma. According to Shankar Gupta, of Gaming Insider, one thing in particular stood out about the test results. Popcap tested different setups for their game ads. One setup allowed the users to download the game and play for as long as they wanted for free but they had to view video ads during the natural breaks in the gameplay. Another way the users could buy the game to make the ads go away. The last setup allowed the users to play the first three levels for free with ads but then locked them out until they actually purchased the game.

Popcap is not your usual in-game advertiser. They specialize in online games and are not a developer or in-game advertising company.

Popcap is in two businesses, they are trying to sell their games, and now they are also considering selling these in-game ads, which have very competitive clickthrough rates. The tests showed that the two configurations work in different ways. The best configuration to sell games is the one where the game locks up after you play the first three levels.

"Once the player’s got through the first three levels, they don’t want to stop. But then they buy, and the ads stop showing, so there’s no inventory for the advertiser. Conversely, the configuration where users could play as long as they wanted with ads showing the whole time served the most impressions, and delivered the highest number of clickthroughs, but didn’t drive conversions"

For now Popcap is going with the setup that will allow them to sell more game and get less clickthroughs. They believe this is the best way because they are not confident in their ability to sell all of the advertising inventory that they would have if they chose to use the other setup method.

Britain's newest recruitment method

According to Massive Inc. "the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) launched the UK and World's first in-game recruitment advertising campaign." This campaign was launched with TMP Worldwide, who is GCHQ's recruitment advertising partner. TMP apparently led the strategy and partnered with Massive, which happens to be owned by Microsoft. This campaign is supposed to "promote career opportunities in the British Intelligence services via online in-game ads on selected games in the UK."

It is debatable whether this is the first usage of in-game ads as a recruitment tool. The United States Army developed not a campaign but an entire game geared towards promoting the Army and encouraging recruitment.

The one month campaign began at the end of October. According to Massive's press release they will give GCHQ a "highly effective and relevant means of promoting exciting career opportunities to the online gaming audience, through real-world scenarios and realistic street and billboard advertising placements in selected PC and console games in the Massive Network."

In-game advertising has been used successfully to promote companies and some global brands and increase sales and awareness. However, a one month campaign will not be very effective given the shortness of its duration. Also there could be complications with integration because game titles can take years to develop.