Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

If you weren’t sure about it before, well you can rest assured that in-game advertising has finally arrived, because Google, perhaps now the world's most important advertising broker, is planning a move into the burgeoning industry. News floating around the GoogleSphere is that the company is believed to be in talks to acquire Adscape Media, a San Francisco company whose technology allows for the placement of ads into games via the Internet. Google is giving too much away, at the moment, but hinted that it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. "We are always considering new ways to extend Google's advertising program to benefit our users, advertisers and publishers," a Google spokesman told the Wall Street Journal. "In-game advertising offers one such possible extension among many others." Well, when you consider that Google is already in the process of extending its traditional Internet search advertising business to newspapers, radio and digital billboards. And that it has said it plans to extend into television ads as well, you have to wonder what’s left? With the in-game ad market poised for explosive growth (the Yankee Group predicts it will be $732 million by 2010), I think the guys should stop sharing that Boeing 777, and get one each. Heck, they could afford a few dozen each.

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