Projected to grow by over 10 times the $78 million it took in last year, to $971 million by 2011, online gaming is drawing the attention of Google (GOOG), as it announced it's working on an Adsense for Games, targeting the in-game advertising market.
It sounds like Google will be creating some type of a marketplace where game publishers will be able to insert advertising into their games, and advertisers will be able to buy gaming ads using the Google system.
To begin with, Google says it will offer ads in games offered on the Web, later they'll look at getting into consoles and computers.
While it wasn't mentioned, it seems they'll offer up ads similar to those most commonly used now; especially animation between game levels and in-game billboard sponsorships. Although Andy Beal thinks "Their best success will likely be to place relevant ads alongside all of the online flash games - that’s a huge channel on its own."
This particular intitiative should be especially useful and profitable for smaller game producers, as some already use the existing Google Adsense system. Smaller producers don't have the type of infrastructure to make that work for them.
Even so, Google's still pursuing some of the big players like Sony to place in-game advertising with them.
This is one of the areas where Google will be entering behind a number of existing competitors, like Microsoft (MSFT), who with their acquisition of Massive Inc. last year, has been offering in-game advertising for some time; although it's primarily inhouse with MSN Games site and Xbox Live.
Double Fusion and IGA Worldwide are other existing players in the space.
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