It started as an idea in a pub three years ago, when Sydneysiders Daniel Ringland, Karl Flores and David Banham wondered whether they could create an advertising network targeting an audience of online gamers.
Tomorrow, Ringland, 30, and Flores, 32, are off to Seattle to set up Pinion's US office while Banham, 26, stays back in Australia to build out the engineering team (currently two people but increasing to four).
Early this year, after ups and downs turning the concept into reality, they partnered with Valve, one of the world's largest game developers. This has helped them secure $1.5 million in funding from Australian investors, on top of the $400,000 they raised a year ago.
Globally, if you play multiplayer PC games such as Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Half Life 2, Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress 2 online, then you may encounter ads served up from Australia by Pinion.
For those who run online game servers it is a chance to earn back the costs of running the server, while for advertisers it provides them access to the lucrative engaged 18-35 male demographic, which is increasingly spending time away from mainstream media.
Gamers can buy products from within the game window without being bumped out into a web browser. Advertisers so far have included companies such as KFC, Paramount, Boost Mobile and Budweiser.
"We identified a way to place advertising in video games in a different way to what anyone had tried in the past," said Ringland, Pinion's chief operating officer.
Others have tried and failed to create ad networks for video games.
Massive, acquired by Microsoft for between $US200 million and $US400 million in 2006, allowed game developers to write ad inventory into their code which could be changed dynamically. The ads appeared on objects such as billboards and storefronts.
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