Sony says it will now start running ads in PlayStation 3 games. Sony has reached an agreement with marketing firm IGA Worldwide to provide dynamic in-game ads for the PlayStation 3. Shortly after the announcement, IGA Worldwide announced a deal making IGA Worldwide the exclusive ad provider for PS3 games developed and published by industry giant EA. Games most likely to be effected by this deal are EA Sports games as well as racing games like Need for Speed and Burnout. The move by Sony is most likely to counteract Microsoft’s buy out of advertising firm Massive and then creating a similar exclusive deal providing advertising for Xbox 360 games.

In-game advertising is a growing trend, with dynamic ads the new money maker for game publishers. Dynamic ads are places in the game that do not have a designated ad on the game disc, but can be provided with an ad such as an upcoming movie release or other time sensitive ads. This results in much more revenue for game makers, since companies need to keep paying for the advertisements like TV commercials rather than a one-shot ad that will always be on the game disc. Sony seems to be hitting the console advertising market pretty hard recently, with the release today of the first episode of Qore. Sony seems to be trying to squeeze every penny it can out of the PS3.

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