Google Gets Into the Game with Adscape
A post on its Web site last Friday confirmed that Google has bought in-game advertising company Adscape.
The purchase of the San Francisco-based firm had been rumored since February, at which time the company was valued at about $23 million. However, Google did not reveal the financial terms of the acquisition.
“In-game advertising is an area where we believe Google could add a lot of value to users, advertisers and publishers,” the Google post said. “As more and more people spend time playing video games, we think we can create opportunities for advertisers to reach the target audiences while maintaining a high-quality, engaging user experience.”
Google did not say whether future in-game ads would be integrated with other Google advertising platforms.
Adscape represents Google’s first foray into placing ads within console or video games. Last year Microsoft spent $200 million to acquire in-game ad company Massive Inc. The company told an analyst conference on March 15 that it currently has more than 200 active ad campaigns running on 53 game titles and expects to extend that to more than 100 titles by the end of 2007.
Research in January from The Yankee Group and Parks Associates estimated that the in-game ad market would account for $589 million in spending by 2010.
