Last May Microsoft bought
Katherine Hays ’98’s company. (courtesy Katherine Hays ’98)
PROFILE Katherine
Hays ’98 Reaching gamers with advertising
Katherine Hays ’98 doesn’t play video games. But that didn’t
stop her from coming up with an idea for how to get gamers’ attention as
they blow up buildings and shoot bad guys. Fresh out of Harvard Business School
in 2003, Hays convinced a business partner that a new way to reach online gamers
with advertising was through creating a network that could insert real-time ads
into the games. Those ads are broadcast, like ads on TV, on certain days and
times.
Gamers are largely men 18 to 34 years old — a key demographic audience
for advertisers. At the time that Hays teamed with her partner, the advertising
industry was just beginning to realize that this prime demographic group was
watching less TV and spending as much time or more playing video games. “Commercial
advertisers were having a hard time reaching their audience with their message,” says
Hays, who lives in New York City.
Enter Massive, the company she co-founded in 2003. With a business
plan and a prototype, Hays shopped her idea around and, after a lot of rejection,
eventually landed capital investors. Meanwhile, Massive’s head of technology
designed the software to deliver real-time ads into games.
Since then Massive has grown to 70 employees and works with blue-chip
companies, including Coca-Cola and Honda. When people play a video game on their
Xbox or other gaming system at home, Massive’s network delivers ads through
the Internet at certain times into a billboard or storefront of the games. For
example, Domino’s Pizza might run an ad campaign at 10 p.m. Thursdays for
six weeks. If a gamer is playing at that time, he will see the Domino’s
ad on a billboard. Hays is co-author of two patents for the technology she helped
develop.
An entrepreneurial spirit is in Hays’ genes. Both her parents
started their own companies: Her father owns a pest-control company, and her
mother co-owns a home-restoration company. Growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, she
often listened to her mother and father share their ups and downs of starting
something from scratch. She earned a degree in art and archaeology and a certificate
in visual arts from Princeton, where she rowed varsity for four years and founded
the Princeton Art Club. Before going to Harvard, Hays worked on Wall Street as
a media analyst at Goldman Sachs.
Taking a risk with a startup has paid off for Hays. Last May, Microsoft
bought Massive for between $200 million and $400 million, according to The
Wall Street Journal. Hays, who became a senior director at Microsoft and
met with Bill Gates in September to discuss how technology is changing the advertising
industry, won’t comment on the amount or say how much she made in the merger.
She plans on staying with Massive to ensure that the integration with the software
giant goes smoothly. Ultimately, she sees herself either getting into venture
capital to help other entrepreneurs, or starting another company.
She hopes her story will inspire other young women. This fall Harvard
Business School is using it as a case study in its entrepreneurial marketing
course.
