Apparently having tested the tech for a year, they feel it is ready to be implemented, the idea being rather than just beaming videos to them in the middle of a game, players can view an ad then, when servers detected the commercial had been considered in its entirety, "release rewards to the player".

This tech would be licensed out to developers so it could be implemented in the game itself (unlike the ads we already see on consoles, in places like system menu screens), and they're trying to justify it by saying that because young people are "cord-cutters", they're unreachable via traditional, cheaper marketing, and are only being reached by branded content deals (like the sneakers and clothes in NBA 2K, or cup noodles in Final Fantasy).

Surely if young people are cord cutters they do not want to be reached by advertising at all.  Indeed, at what point do any product makers think "this is a good game lets work out how to really hack off our customers by inserting an advert in it".

One of the reasons streaming television took off was because terrestrial television was ruined by advertising,  so it looks like the gaming industry has not really learnt the lesson.

Testing has been taking place inside Smite for around a year, and the findings are as dire as you expect.

"Data from one of Simulmedia's pilot campaigns with Smite, a F2P multiplayer battle arena game from Tencent's Hi-Rez Studios, shows that players were much more likely (22 per cent) to play a game and spend money within the game (11 percent), if they watched in-game ads that gave them access to more gaming perks." As a result, playerWON "plans to launch in-game ads in roughly a dozen more games by the year's end".