Video Game Ads by Google

Google has expanded to image ads, video ads, and print ads, and has frequently been rumored to be entering radio and television. While many think that television ads (ala Spot Runner) could be Google's next major move, they may be neglecting a potentially largër opportuníty: in-game video game advertising.

The Entertainment Software Association put U.S. salës of video game hardware and software at $7.3 billion back in 2004, a figure that rivals Hollywood box office revenue. In-game video game advertising is nothing new for the booming game industry – large companies have been buying static advertisements in games for years. What is new is the expansion of online gaming into the mainstream. Once reserved for only PC Gamers, console gamers have now discovered a whole new world of competition over a broadband connection.

In a recent interview with TechNewsWorld, EA's John Schappert, who oversees the largest interactive game studio in the world, was asked about in-game advertising: "In-game ad integration is a growing business where we see both advertisers and consumers looking for more. It's an additional revenue stream that is still small, but growing.

There's no doubt that with the best programmers in the world Google is capable of developing and improving upon the technology that Massive has. It's also not hard to imagine advertisers paying per thousand impressions (PPM) for their text or image ads to be shown in specific games, much like they do now for specific sites. The tough part for Google, however, would be the distribution of those ads.

As opposed to signing up websites to display their ads by copying some code on to their site, Google would have to work with game programmers throughout the development process. This would be much more time consuming and would be a much largër risk for Google. In the same way that Massive signed the contract with 2K, Google would have to sign large contracts with game developers and work with them for several months to integrate their ads.

This enforces the fact that the main difference between what happened with DoubleClick and what could happen with video games is that it would probably be more work for Google to distribute their ads over multiple channels (i.e. more games). Since each game is programmed differently, there is no game equivalent to the JavaScrípt used in all AdSense ads. Every game would need to be tailored to Google's ad network individually. Difficult: yes. Impossible for Google!