Google May Code In-Game Advertising

Google has digital initiatives rumored for a couple of areas. In-game advertising delivered through a potential acquisition of Adscape Media may place Google ads in online games, while the search advertising company's initiative to bring e-books to the masses could find allies among the biggest global publishers.

reporting a possible team-up between the search advertising company and several top publishers: Jens Redmer, director of Google Book Search in Europe, said: "We are working on a platform that will let publishers give readers full access to a book online." He did not believe taking books online would mean the end of the printed word but it would give readers more options when it came to buying. "You may just want to rent a travel guide for the holiday or buy a chapter of a book. Ultimately, it will be the readers who decide how books are read," he said. Accomplishing this will require the usual features, like a mechanism to download the e-book and a method of formatting it to look decent on a computer screen. The possibilities for e-books could be extended to portable devices, like mobiles. There's just one little obstacle to this idea. That would be the protecting and distributing digital books work for publishers and readers. On its advertising side, plenty of chatter has been made over the possibility that Google will purchase purchased last year to provide a similar service. If Google grabs Adscape Media this week as the Wall Street Journal in-game advertising, considering the audience they are intended to reach. That would leave the problem of creating ads appropriate to their settings. A Nissan Titan may be a great pickup truck, but running an ad for it in World of Warcraft or Star Wars Galaxies will irritate gamers more than anything. Google could be limited in its ad placements within games for this reason. Tag: Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark Murdok: David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.