Following hot on the heals of the rumours of TV advertising through Adwords, it is reported that Google may introduce the ability to buy in game advertising through their online portal. Dubbed Adsense for games, it is reported that Google “has developed an in-game advertising technology that allows it to insert video ads into games.” Whilst there are a large number of other providers offering in game advertising, most notably Microsoft through the acquisition of Massive Incorporated, this would make Google the first to simplify the process and increase its viability for inclusion in a standard media plan and their purchase of Adscape in February of 2007 certainly gives them the expertise.
If all the rumours and news stories are true about Google’s plans, coupled with the recently launched Adplanner tool, Adwords could be on its way to becoming the holy grail of advertising platforms, incorporating online offline and in game into one web based portal. Whether they can pull it off or not remains to be seen but they seem to be putting a lot of effort into achieving the same dominance in other media that they have in search.