NOV. 20, 2009 • The Nielsen Company and Microsoft Corp. have partnered to research how well Xbox 360 players respond to in-game advertising. The latter sees an opportunity to peel away ad dollars from network television and wants to better measure the effectiveness of in-game advertising as a sales tool.

Impact: Microsoft is keen to leverage the growth of free-to-play models, and 1 vs. 100 is one of the first major experiments to that goal. Yet being tied to Xbox Live is both innovative and restrictive. Without the millions of potential players that a PC version would attract, Microsoft has to work harder to attract sponsors and advertisers to fund the digital game show that can attract more than 114,000 simultaneous players. With better data obtained via Nielsen, Microsoft hopes to make a stronger pitch.