Google Launches Adsense for Games

by jordan | October 8, 2008 at 09:47 am
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Rob saw this coming several months ago, but now it's officially in beta: Google Adsense for games.

On Tuesday night, Google announced the beta launch of its new AdSense for Games program, the search giant's first foray into the video games market, and the long-awaited answer to the question of what the company planned to do with AdScape Media, which it bought for $23 million in February 2007.
Now that the first jackal has attacked, others are following suit, and these are hungry jackals indeed: the in-game branch of the advertising industry has massive potential.

"By (Google) finally launching in the space," said DoubleFusion CEO Jonathan Epstein, "it confirms for all parties...that this space is of interest to one of the largest media companies in the world. Google does not enter into markets that don't have billion dollar-plus potential for them."
However, one of Google's hurdles is the goodwill of gamers, who traditionally oppose in-gave advertising as intrusive.

"What I've seen," said Benkoil," is that the community of gamers tend to be very vocal and emotional about anything that they find that isn't well integrated into a game. So if Google is doing an AdSense initiative, I would hope that they would do it in a seamless way that isn't interruptive of the gaming experience. Because if not, they would face some backlash."
When I looked at the example games, though, they all struck me as kids' games. Is this because such games have a less "deep" environment and are thus easer to enable for ads, or because juvenile gamers will have a less-entrenched animosity towards such ads?

Either way, Google is playing chess here: even if Adense isn't an initial hit, the platform that they build will have value to other advertisers.

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DarthAlbert III

With my mock-up, I was actually making fun of Google's (rumoured) attempt to buy Valve. My first instinct was that we'd start seeing AdSense in games. Even though the rumour has been denied, it would appear the AdSense idea continues on. Thanks for the heads up and for choosing my image.  My article can be found at http://tehflakes.ca/?p=78

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tim_un

Thanks for credit for my picture too. My full article at http://AhTim.com

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