IGN, GameStop Partner For Online Ad Sales, Content

Major video game retailer GameStop and online content portal IGN have announced a partnership that will see the two companies integrating their online commerce and content. As part of the deal, IGN content will appear on GameStop.com and links to purchase titles from GameStop will appear on IGN's network of sites, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD blog. In addition, IGN will act as the sales representative for new branded advertisements that will appear on the retailer's site. The companies will reportedly combine their traffic numbers, joining together GameStop's 7.2 million monthly unique visitors and IGN's 28.9 million monthly unique visitors into a single audience for advertisers. The move represents a further broadening of the digital revenue base for GameStop, which is seeing business at its over 6,500 brick-and-mortar stores threatened by the quick growth of digital game sales. IGN also sells digital game downloads through its Direct2Drive subsidiary. Earlier this year, GameStop purchased online Flash game portal Kongregate and announced plans to start selling downloadable content for Sony systems in their stores. GameStop stores serve as the exclusive newsstand distributor and main subscription seller for Game Informer magazine, which a recent BurrelsLuce report showed as the seventh most-circulated magazine in the United States. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation purchased IGN in 2005 for $650 million. In July, the media network launched myIGN , a social network targeted at gamers.