Google in more acquisition rumours

January 25th, 2007

Google appears to be ramping up its efforts against Microsoft again with rumours they are going to acquire in-game advertising company Adscape Media.

Adscape has made no secret that it has been in acquesition talks with “third parties” and based on Google’s recent behaviour (recent acquisitions and experimenting with radio & print ads) I would expect this to be the next logical step. Adscape has been price tagged at £10-15 million, which means Google could put a bid in from pocket change.

Research into in-game advertising has shown it already to be highly effective at reaching otherwise hard to reach consumers, such as 18-25yr old males who have vastly reduced TV comsumption. Several Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) have already experimented with the trade off, having no monthly fee - but users being exposed to in-game advertising. In game advertising can be blended into the virtual world it is present in. A virtual billboard is sensitive to the game environment it is displayed in, as not to ruin the game experience, however users that click on this board can actually go through and explore the advertiser’s website, through the virtual billboard, in game. The game network also provides detailed statistics such as how many players saw the advert, at what distance, what angle they were facing, how long they looked at it for and if they interacted with it. All of these metrics will be used to build up some behaviour data to work out how you can gauge the success of such a campaign.

Last year Microsoft bought in-game ad server Massive for £200m and with the launch of its Vista operating system, which links into its Xbox 360 console, Microsoft seems to have the edge in a sector that is predicted to be with between £700m and 1.8bn by 2010. I can’t see Google leaving themselves so exposed in a market that is core to their business.