Microsoft to Do Ads in Blizzard Games

Video game advertising company Massive, owned by Microsoft, just struck a deal of name-appropriate proportions with Blizzard Entertainment.

The two companies have agreed to a multi-year advertising deal that will span throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, South Korea and Australia.

This doesn’t mean that you’ll start seeing billboards peppered all throughout your nightly raids, as the advertising deal specifies that Massive will deliver ads to Blizzard’s websites and Battle.net.

Blizzard said explicitly that this deal would not mean in-game ads. “This partnership does not include in-game advertising, as Massive understands and respects our stance against advertising that might detract from gameplay or offend our players,” said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment.

On Battle.net will be players who are still putting time into the older StarCraft, Warcraft and Diablo series of games, but expect traffic to ramp up in a big way with the release of StarCraft II and Diablo III.

Massive will also serve ads on Blizzard’s websites, which we assume gathers a considerable amount of traffic with the 11 million subscribers to its insanely popular World of Warcraft online role playing game.