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In a recent article on GameIndustry.biz, Alex St. John, founder of Wild Tangent explains their departure from game interrupting advertisments.

You may remember Wild Tangent from agonizing late night registry cleanings of years past, the other name for what they were up to is “AdWare.”  Well, in 2007, they switched to standard IAB model of ads before the games start, and here’s what St. John has to say about their results:

“You sell it with standard media sales force, part of a standard IAB ad unit. It sells great, it’s easy to scale, it is easy to explain, it is easy to measure, and it works for any kind of game.” Wild Tangent’s ad revenues went up 400 per cent the minute they switched to this model in 2007, according to the GameIndustry.biz article.

This leap of faith paid off because they conformed to a system which Google has pioneered for years, put simply “Don’t Screw Up the User’s Experience!” Invasive and obtrusive ads generally lead to aggravation of your users, and it is not uncommon for those users to then blame the advertiser for the intrusion, or for their AdWare hassles in general.

I’m glad to see Wild Tangent experiencing success while doing the right thing.