Maybe it was a dream...

But I remember seeing "in-game ads" around the city, how long has it been, two years ago maybe? Whatever happened to those? Anyone remeber when they disappeared and did the devs ever comment on it? It was fun seeing Nike shoes and cell phone ads on the billboards of Paragon City and being able to help the devs out by just passing by some pictures

No comment on why they disappeared. They were supposed to be fed (IIRC) from a third party - the revenue probably wasn't there.

They were also supposedly going to use some player-run ads in there, too. Never saw it. Only saw two ads ever (and at times they looked - er - out of place.)

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It's been a little less than two years. I saw a few when I was on my trial account last August, but haven't seen any since, and I've had a full account since October last year, so I guess August of September last year was the end of them.

nothing official, but like bill, my guess is that there wasn't any money in them. most of the content was an odd mix, athletics shoes and skateboard themed texting devices..to an mmo crowd? and i really haven't seen an mmo make money from ads, but hey at least they tried something new.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Agreed on the theory that the revenue just wasn't there to support the adverts.

Was interesting to see the adverts progress, the first one was, in my opinion, awful it didn't fit the setting at all and the fact the promised 'texturing' wasn't applied to the adds which meant even the ads in the Rogue Isles looked pristine and nice (the worst offender was going into those post apocalyptic maps and finding a pristine yet half buried Nike Jetter billboard)

As they went on, texturing got applied to make them look like posters, rather than just crappy looking Jpeg files pasted over an ingame space and the ones in the Rogue Isles were dirtied up (the apocalyptic ones suitably treated as well).

Then it just stopped with no explanation...

Europe got one round of ads before it was discontinued (for Babylon AD, a predictable and tad crappy sci-fi movie starrin Vin 'my careers gone down hill a bit' Diesel).

Combined with the backlash from a decent segment of the community at the time for even daring to have ads in the game, despite the fact you could turn them off, probably didn't help causes as well as the fact that they're background, people don't stop and look at them, you fly/speed/jump past them, meaning that the adverts were largely ignored.

Overall, even with these factors, it was definetly a lack of revenue and the ads just not being the kind of thing an MMO audience would even buy which killed off the Ads.

Edit: Here's a screenshot of the only European Ad.

I always assumed that with the economy crashing a lot of companies pulled back on expenses; such as advertising in odd places.