Google enters in-game ad market

by Sarah Crawley-Boevey, Brand Republic 09-Oct-08, 10:15

LONDON - Google is to offer to sell in-game ads for the first time and will initially target web games only.

The offering, which will be sold via its AdSense team, comes as research from comScore shows more than 25% of internet users play online games every week, amounting to over 200m users worldwide.

AdSense for Games, which is currently in beta and open only to publishers with 80% or more traffic from the UK or the US, will allow video, image or text ads to be displayed at any point in online games.

Google's AdWords team will sell ad placements to top brand advertisers and games manufacturers will be able to see contextually targeted text and image ads based on content and demographic information.

Google's entry into in-game advertising, together with speculation that eSurance, Sprint and Sony Pictures Entertainment are to be the first big names taking part in AdSense for Games, is a shot in the arm for the ad platform, which is already sold by the likes of Microsoft's Massive, IGA and Double Fusion.

Google will take a cut of the ad revenue generated, with the remainder going to publishers, distributors or developers.

Comments

Peter Sanchez - 09/10/2008

About time... I wrote a University paper last year which proposed Google entering into this market which I emailed to a senior VP. Don't mind if they used my ideas, at least they are actually trying to reach new markets.