AllThingsD » Mediaweek

Massive Isn't: Microsoft Reportedly Shuttering In-Game Ad Unit

Peter Kafka — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 19:39:49 +0000

In 2006, Microsoft paid more than $200 million for Massive, a start-up that inserted advertising directly into video games. Now it’s shutting the whole thing down, says Mike Shields at MediaWeek. Shields says Massive had three problems: 1) the market for in-game ads never got nearly as big as predicted 2) Electronic Arts, which represented a big chunk of the revenue Massive did have, brought its business in-house and 3) Microsoft’s Xbox unit never bought into the deal in the first place.

Condé Cuts Continue: 15 at Digital, More to Come

Peter Kafka — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:30:31 +0000

Condé Nast, which shuttered four magazines this week, said it won’t be cutting any more titles. But that won’t be the last of its cuts: The publisher is looking to cut costs by roughly 25 percent at all the magazines it publishes, likely leading to layoffs in many cases.

Today’s example doesn’t come from a magazine per se, but from the company’s digital group, which let go of “more than” 15 people, MediaWeek reports.

You should see a trickle of these reports in the weeks to come, and from other publishers as well: Employees at Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc., for example, are bracing for cuts this fall, or in early 2010, and my former colleagues at Forbes expect to hear about another set of layoffs in the next week or so. And whoever wins the bidding for BusinessWeek will almost certainly take an ax to that company’s payroll.

Are Network TV Ad Sales Terrible? Or Just Bad? And When Will We Know?

Peter Kafka — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:52:33 +0000

The TV industry’s traditional “upfront” sales season–the networks’ springtime sprint to hawk most of their ad inventory for the coming year–has come to a close. Which means it’s time for another TV industry tradition: Guessing how much ad inventory the networks sold during the upfronts.

Estimates vary widely, but they’re all bad–as we thought they would be. Variety says ad agencies think the four broadcast networks–News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, Disney’s (DIS) ABC, GE’s (GE) NBC and CBS (CBS)–plus the pint-sized CW, may have seen sales drop by 10 percent to 12 percent compared to last year. Ad Age thinks the decline could by as much as 15 percent. Mediaweek says sales are down a staggering 22 percent.

The other bit of consistency is the explanation for the drop, which is two-pronged: Sales are down both because the economy is bad and because the networks are offering less inventory than they normally would. They’re holding back lots of their spots in hopes of selling them at higher prices later in the year, presumably when the economy comes roaring back.

I’ll let bigger brains than mine handicap the odds of that happening (but for the record, you can color me skeptical). In the meantime, let’s see what depressed TV ad prices do to prices for Web video ads.