Paid Search Ads in Video Games?

This post is from from my other blog here

I fired up EA SPORTS NHL 08 for my Xbox 360 today during an extended lunch break and noticed something new. There was now an advertisement for the new Simpson's Movie video game on the boards behind the goal. I can't recall what ad it replaced, but after some digging, I did find that the Simpson's Movie game was an EA game. I am connected to Xbox live and EA must be adding ads to the game via the service. I had downloaded the demo of the Simpson's movie game via Xbox live last week. Did it know that I had? Was it serving me the ad in an effort to get me to purchase the game?

It was kind of cool to see an ad in the game that wasn't a generic ad for hockey equipment, but I am not sure about EA serving me ads in a game that I bought. I do wonder if this will allow companies to serve ads to the most relevant users.

I really do wonder if they served the ad because I had downloaded the demo. I also wonder if eventually we will be able to serve paid search ads within video games.