Welcome to two weeks ago!

There was a popular theory floated around the ether of the Internet that after Amazon bought the game video streaming service Twitch for close to $1 billion dollars it would start shoehorning its ads into video streams and adding "buy now" buttons everywhere. But according to Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, the company is not interested in selling games directly to consumers. Twitch's strength, he notes, is in promoting games natively with content like YouTube personalities have found success in doing.

Popular YouTube gaming crew The Yogscast, which has over 7 million subscribers, announced plans to take "a small share" of the sales revenue for sandbox space game Space Engineers during July.

In return the Yogscast team will run a series of videos and Yogscast-branded items for the game. Yogscast presenters are calling this new initiative "YogDiscovery," and the team says this is the first of a series of paid partnerships with developers. They also stress that the developers of this game will have no editorial input or control.

We have all had problems with lag. That annoying phenomenon that results in your character continuing to run on your screen but standing perfectly still, and thus a sitting duck, on the screens of your opponents. However, there is one place we don't normally see lag, games without an online component. 

Research firm IHS Inc. and game network WildTangent released research today that indicates consumers are willing to put up with "value exchange-style advertising" in games. IHS describes "value exchange advertising" as a method used by advertisers to reward gamers for viewing ads with items such as in-game items or free game sessions.

HBO will advertise the next season of its hit fantasy series Game of Thrones in Riot Games' popular MOBA game, League of Legends. According to [A]ListDayily interview with Dustin Beck, Vice president of eSports and merchandising at Riot Games, Riot Games and HBO will team up to create a three-week long campaign leading up to the premiere of the fourth season of the show.

The marketing campaign could include a mash-up trailer and website take-overs.

A change in commercial advertising regulations in China related to video games is in full effect, though as this Kotaku report points out, it is a solution for a problem that doesn't really exist.

Angry Birds maker Rovio issued a statement today (which they passed along to GamePolitics this morning following a request for comment yesterday) in response to a report from ProPublica that spy agencies were gathering information on users of its popular game. The company said in a statement that it does not share data about its users with government agencies such as the NSA or the UK's GCHQ.

While Microsoft (through a marketing partnership with Machinima) and Electronic Arts (through its "Ronku" marketing program) paying content creators to promote its games to followers on YouTube without disclosing the relationship may be unethical, neither company is breaking the law and it is unlikely that anyone involved could be fined for not disclosing a relationship according to what a Federal Trade Commission spokesperson tells Polygon.

The Ad Council, the country’s largest producer of public service advertising, has created and released its first in-house game called Toothsavers. The game is designed to encourage children to brush their teeth for at least two minutes, two times a day. The game was developed with the aid and input of Healthy Mouths, Healthy Lives.

While Red Bull is the number one brand on YouTube (mostly because it sponsors so many interesting sporting and gaming events worldwide), "PlayStation" is also pretty popular, according to data collected by Statista and Mashable.

An Advertising Age report highlighted by NeoGAF unearthed over the weekend has thrown some gasoline on a story that surfaced earlier this year about how Kinect could be used to improve the monetization of Xbox One customers.

Today Microsoft launched a new contest that encourages Xbox One fans to create and submit a one minute video about the Xbox One games they like. The creators of the chosen videos will win a series of Xbox One related goodies when the system launches this fall including an Xbox One system, a one-year Xbox Live Gold subscription, an undetermined amount of free Xbox One launch titles, and the opportunity to work with Microsoft's Upload team in the future.

A new attack ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) pays homage to the classic Nintendo light gun game Duck Hunt while assailing Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. The ad features the famous backdrop of the Duck Hunt game and displays ducks marked with various issues - such as Obamacare, energy, taxes, and 12,000 jobs for the Gulf Coast - that Sen. Landrieu "misses" on. At the end of the 41-second ad, a familiar dog laughs at all of the antics.

American Express plans to offer a line of prepaid debit cards featuring images and characters from Riot Games' popular MOBA game, League of Legends. The company will announce the new branded debit cards on Wednesday, according to the New York Times, as part of a sponsorship program.

The cards will allow cardholders to get "Riot Points" that can be used to buy characters and other extras in the game.

Deep Silver has announced an insane gag SKU for Saint's Row IV called the "Dangerous Wad Edition." Sure, it's a marketing joke to draw attention to the upcoming release of Deep Silver's Saint's Row IV and UK retailer GAME's REAL SKUs for the game, but it sure is interesting - especially if someone was insane enough to purchase it.

The Dangerous Wad Edition costs $1 million, is only available in the UK through GAME and - there's only one copy available in the world.

It comes with some extravagant extras including:

Saints Row 4 associate producer Kate Nelson tells Edge in a recent interview that she didn't like former publisher THQ's use of adult entertainment stars to promote Saints Row 2 and Saints Row: The Third.

"I did not always love how much THQ put an emphasis on porn stars," Nelson told Edge. "In Saints Row 2 and Saints Row: The Third there was an emphasis on the penthouse girls, and Tera Patrick."

Where do babies come from? Here's a PS Vita or a PS3.

Kotaku points out a new ad campaign running in Argentina that offers a unique marketing pitch: buy your kids Sony's systems so you can avoid talking about sex. The ad was sent in by Kotaku reader Damian Hernaez, who saw it in Buenos Aires and sent a picture in. Translated into English, the tagline for the ad (pictured to your left) reads:

InnoGames says that its advertising campaign on television in the United Kingdom has helped the company's free-to-play strategy game Forge of Empires surpass the 10 million registered user mark. The ads have been running for several weeks in the UK, with InnoGames planning a long-term TV campaign for the title.

A new television ad for Dead Island: Riptide has been banned by Australia's Advertising Standards Board, despite appeals by its local distributor AIE that the content it was banned for was "contextually relevant" to the game. The content that got the ad yanked for broadcast was a couple committing suicide to avoid getting ripped apart by a pack of zombies.

Game Connection America and [a]list daily today revealed nominees for the Best in Video Game Marketing Award, to be handed out at Game Connection America 2013 and Riot Games, Telltale Games, and Microsoft lead the pack with nominations. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on March 25, 2013, held from 4:30 to 5:30 pm at San Francisco’s Sir Francis Drake Hotel.

Former Square Enix and Taito executive Keiji Fujita has joined Japanese mobile ad network and game publisher Adways, the company announced today. Fujita will take the reins of the company's San Francisco office, which will serve as the home of the U.S. subsidiary, Adways Interactive. Keiji Fujita will serve as the Vice President of Game Business. The company also announced that it is looking for non-Japanese free-to-play mobile games to launch in the Japanese market. It will be on the hunt for such properties at Game Connection America 2013, where it will be present as an exhibitor.

Spicy Horse founder American McGee isn't pleased with EA's marketing team and the way it handled the sequel to one of his best games after his exit from id Software. Speaking at an "Ask Me Anything" over at Reddit recently, McGee complained about the way EA's marketing team has handled Alice: The Madness Returns.

Eurogamer reports that actor Jerry Lambert has settled a lawsuit with Sony over his part in a Bridgestone ad where he played an engineer playing a Wii video game. In 2012 Sony sued Bridgestone and the actor because they claimed that Lambert's engineer character in the ad was too much like its popular fictitious PS3 spokesperson Kevin Butler.

In an article talking about various groups meeting with Joe Biden's task force on gun violence this week in Washington, Ad Week points out that groups like Common Sense Media want to curtail ads for games during television shows, movies and big sporting events like NFL football.

If you don't care too much for those ads on Xbox Live.. well too bad, because more are coming, according to Microsoft. Apparently taking a page from Hulu Plus where subscribers who pay a monthly subscription are still forced to watch ads, Microsoft says that the first wave of NUads (or "natural user-interface ads"), which were deployed in the fourth quarter of 2012, were "highly successful" and that it plans to put additional investment in the space.

A regular GamePolitics reader (who has asked to remain anonymous) points out that something is a little screwy with Wal-Mart's prices listed in its ads and how they ring up at the cash register. His tale begins with this leaked Black Friday flyer at theblackfriday.com, which shows select video games with price points set at $10, $15,and $25.

YouTube sensation The Fine Brothers Productions offers a nifty new video featuring a group of elderly people watching and reacting to the new trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops II. While some of the "seasoned" participants seemed close minded about the idea of children (teens) or adults playing such a violent first-person shooter (one person said it could train people to kill) there are a few bright spots of commentary on the usefulness of violent video games as a teaching tool.

A new print ad from Sony Computer Entertainment France is getting some attention for pushing the boundaries of sexism to promote the company's PS Vita hand-held. The ad (pictured left and courtesy of MCV) shows a female body with four breasts and compares those four breasts to the PS Vita's front and rear touch screens.

The tagline for the ad is "Touch both sides, twice the sensations."

Some are chalking the ad up to what is acceptable in French advertising and cultural standards.

Our own Andrew Eisen does his best to fit into Nintendo's new "I'm Not a Gamer" ad campaign for the Nintendo 3DS, with an ad of his own with the same message. You can check it out to your left and - assuming you like it as much as I do - you can subscribe to Andrew's YouTube Channel to see even more funny videos.