Adscape and Google
A couple days ago, Google formally announced that it had finalized its purchase of Adscape, a firm that specializes in targeted advertising within video games.
From the press release:
Back in the 80s the cost of producing a single game was about $100K. Today it can cost $25M to produce a game. The good news is there are some very passionate gamers out there that have come up with some interesting new ways to introduce non-intrusive and targeted advertising in order to make gaming accessible and affordable for all.
Hmmm, maybe in-game advertising has a place for easing some of the financial burden that comes with making a game, but “non-intrusive and targeted”? That part in particular seems to contradict the rest of the article, especially when you take into consideration shots like this one from Counter-Strike:
Or this one from Splinter Cell:
I point this out because the world of video games seems very far removed from what Google has traditionally been about. Sure, they’ve always been about advertising on web pages, but those ads are targeted towards what you, the user, are supposedly already interested in, whereas in-game advertising generally doesn’t have much to do with the subject of the game you’re playing (unless I’m missing some crucial connection between chasing down terrorists and eating at Subway).
EDIT: I did a little more research on the Subway ads within Counter-Strike, and it turns out that those were actually the result of a hack, and appeared in the game without the permission of Valve, the developer of Counter-Strike. Full article here.
You see, Google made its first millions by revolutionizing the internet advertising business. They gave small advertisers an easy way to target very specific audiences online. For example, if you want, you could advertise to only people who are searching for “gears of war rumble pack”. Google’s just using this as another way to serve their advertisers - you don’t have to even leave the Google AdWords site to advertise on the radio during certain programs, in certain parts of certain computer games, and they’ve even been testing ads in some newspapers. It doesn’t seem much of a stretch to me although it has little to do with search. It has everything to do with targeted advertising, which is where they make all their money.