Xbox Game Pass

Criteo has two potential buyers; publishers consider blocking Google’s joint AI-scraping/search-indexing bot; and Microsoft’s billion-player gaming goal might make sense for mobile.

As premium game prices skyrocket and paid subscriptions and cloud-based gaming services take off, marketers sense a chance to defray rising costs with ad revenue – perhaps dispelling some doubts about the value of more ads in games.

Pundits predicted Microsoft would use Xandr to create an ad-supported video game content fortress, with the ad tech business getting exclusive access to Microsoft’s gaming IP. Any ambitions in that direction may now be on hold.

When it comes to the massive acquisitions making headlines in the video game industry, the implications run much deeper than what titles gamers can play exclusively on which systems. In Microsoft’s case, we’re talking about a sleeping giant in the ad industry with an incredibly strong subscription-based first-party data operation, Xbox Game Pass, at its disposal.