In-game Advertising

[MrQ]

I read a while back on gameindustry.biz that eye blaster are doing a deal with RA to include ingame advertising.
Is this something that is viable in casual games? My main concern is that portal sites would not allow 3rd party advertising from games on thier site if you hooked up a deal from someone such as eyeblaster or IGA.
I realise that games such as puzzle games wouldn't suit ingame advertising, but something such as poker or sports games should be able to intergrate these quite easily. Has anyone had any experience with in-game ads that they could share?

[James Gwertzman]

portal sites would likely not allow your game if you do your own deal with advertisers, but I expect you will shortly see more and more portal sites publishing interfaces for developers to implement in their games which allow the games to hook up to and display ads that the portal provides -- in return, of course, for a revenue share to the developer from the ads.

most portals right now are testing models, but i expect within the year this will be a fairly standard part of the business model.