AdSense ads wind their way into Flash games

After initial testing with social media game maker Playfish, Google is now launching a beta that will include Sprint and Sony as advertisers and Zynga and Konami as game creators. Is this the beginning of an ad-supported virtual world?

Can online gaming and advertising co-exist, or will gamers tune out the ad-supported games at too intrusive? Google will soon find out, with the beta rollout of AdSense for Games software.

The games with the ads will be based on Adobe's Flash, running in a Web browser with no extra software downloaded on the player's end. According to some industry estimates, online gamers are already playing about 200 million rounds of Flash games each month.

Before launching the beta, Google reportedly tested in-game ads with partners that included Playfish, the creator of games such as "Who Has the Biggest Brain?" on Facebook.

At the outset, Google's software will be used in about 25 ad-supported, social media-oriented games, from publishers that will include Playfish, Zynga, and Japanese-based Konami. Konami's ad-supported games will include classic titles such as "Frogger," along with "Track and Field" and "Dance Dance Dance Revolution."

After each game session, Google's software will run a 30-second video spot in which a game character will mention the name of the advertising sponsor. So far, Sprint, Sony Pictures, and and eSurance have signed on as advertisers.

Analyst firm the Yankee Group has forecast the ad-supported online games market to reach $971.3 million three years from now. Some observers also predict that ads will become part of the games themselves, with players inserting ads into billboards in game environments.

Overt advertising, however, hasn't gone over very well on social networking sites, with many users complaining that the ads are an unwelcome distraction from their interactions with online friends.

In efforts to make online ads more palatable, some advertisers have already sought to insert their brands into social media in more subtle ways, collectively referred to as "immersive advertising."

As previously reported in BetaNews, on MTV's VLES site, kids in chat rooms have been sipping on "virtual Pepsis." At Gaia Online, teens and 20-somethings have been dressing up avatars in virtual Disney T-Shirts.

Clearly, Google already has bigger plans in mind than just the 30-second video spots. "As a beta user of AdSense for Games, you can display video ads, image ads, or text ads within your online games to earn revenue. You'll be able to show these ads in placements you define, such as interstitial frames before a game, after a level change, or when a game is over," says a blurb on the AdSense for Games beta Web site.

"Members of our AdWords team will sell your in-game ad placements directly to top brand advertisers, and you'll also see contextually targeted text and image ads based on content and demographic information. In addition, you'll be able to control the ads you see on your pages using our filtering options."

Only time will tell how successful these various Google-conjectured ad approaches will actually be with online gamers.

Meanwhile, early last year, Google acquired in-game ad firm Adscape Media, and rumors persist that Google will ultimately build an ad-supported virtual world.