AdTech Continues

Day two of Ad:Tech took me to “Gamer Nation: Exploring Advertising Effectiveness in the Gaming Ecosytem” and I must say the panel was fantastic. Needless to say Catalyst Senior Partner and Strategist Jim Nichols led the charge providing great insights to the agency perspective on gaming. Thankfully he was the only one on stage not selling anything.

Julie Shumacher of Double Fusion opened up with an interesting theory about how games have always been the original social networks and I completely agree with her. How many people spent nights growing up playing Monopoly or card games with their family? The definition of a social community is people interacting around a common theme, and I think that has duly set the stage for social networks of today.

The most interesting vibe was the battle between Shumacher and Chuck Frizelle of XBOX. The whole time I was waiting for it to blow up into a namecalling, we can do this and you can’t type session. Despite her best efforts, I have to say Frizelle came out on top with his endless Massive plugs. (For those non- industry readers, Microsoft owns Massive, Double Fusion’s direct competitor in the dynamic in- game advertising space).

Day 3 to come…