In a move that makes me look like a genius once again, Party Gaming, operator of PartyPoker.com and .net, has decided to start selling ad space on their US facing web properties in an attempted to offset lost revenues from pulling out of the lucrative US online poker market.

Last year I wrote an article about "adverpoker" (remember that buzzword). In it, I asked why the bigger sites are not trying to monetize on the millions of play money players - most of which will never play for real money.

Clickz.com has reported that Party Gaming has signed a exclusive purchasing agreement with Traffic Marketplace, a Connexus-owned online ad network that claims to reach more than 108 million users monthly.

"They looked for new monetization and the obvious choice was advertising," said Connexus spokesman Calvin Lui.

Under the agreement, Traffic Marketplace will resell advertising and sponsorship opportunities on PartyGaming's US facing versions of PartyPoker.com and PartyPoker.net."

The demographics are just astounding," he contended. "And it's a very captive experience. You actually download a software application that has the game on it. So it's not a Web surfing experience and you are actually engaged in a game."

The type of campaigns will cover rich-media to simple pop-ups to integrated sponsorships. No gambling or pharma ads will be accepted.