I rarely hear any news out of WildTangent, a company that first came to my attention back in 2000, when Paul Steed joined them after leaving (getting booted from) id software. Well, it appears they’re alive and kickin’ and Ad Age has some interesting news (Link) of a videogame advertising currency/token system they’ve developed. From the news article:

The token system, called WildCoins, lets users extend their game play as long as they wish without having to spend the typical $19.95 to buy the game. Coke is offering tokens as prizes through a loyalty program on its MyCoke Rewards site.
…
Up to now, it was too expensive for advertisers to pay to giveaway a game to users as part of a campaign. “This is a way for us to unlock customer promotions within video games,” Mr. Madden said.
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WildTangent also gives game developers a share of revenue for all the tokens sold. Given the 1% to 2% conversion rate of most online titles, this meant that game developers were locked out of recognizing any revenue from the bulk of game play. “It helps accelerate quality of games into the marketplace,” Mr. Madden said. “Developers [have an incentive] to create the best content now.”

Does WildTangent still depend on ActiveX? I hope not.