Google will serve ads inside games

After almost 19 months since the purchase of Adscape, Google is starting to give the possibility to serve advertisement inside on-line games.

According to Google the ads will be shown on intended placement and they will be based on contextual targeting with keywords and tags supplied by developers and publishers. This means, at least for the moment, that ads will not show up randomly at any place and more importantly, still “at least for the moment”, they will probably not try to gather information on how the user is currently playing the game in order to choose which ads to serve; of course my “at least for the moment” consideration means that we will have to check how much really those ads will be intrusive for both their placement and on how they will be chosen.

Actually there is already some concerning point: according to Google’s announcement, advertisers can be charged on a cost-per-impression or cost-per-click basis; the later option imply that those ads are actually clickable and this means that users can be dragged out of the game without their will if they accidently click an ad placed too near another clickable object.

The program is actually still in beta, but it already includes developers and publishers like Konami, Playfish, Zynga, Demand Media, games network Mochi Media, as well as beta advertisers such as Esurance, Sprint, and Sony Pictures.

Adscape was a firm specialized in video game advertising and it has been acquired by Google in March of 2007 for $23 million.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWtL0VZ6G1g[/youtube]

Links
Google’s announcement: http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/adsense_games.html.