Google AdSense Reaches Into Online Games

AdSense has expanded its horizons to allow in-game advertising for Flash-based online games.

Google’s AdSense has conquered Web pages, YouTube, mobile phone content, and now, will move onto the next frontier – video games. Although you won’t be spotting Cialis ads in billboards from GTA IV any time soon, Google expanded AdSense to include the type of online video games that a quarter of Internet users play on a weekly basis.

The beta version of AdSense for Games, launched on Wednesday, will allow web developers to display video ads, image ads, or text ads within their online games, giving them more flexibility. For instance, developers can now pop ads between levels of a game, in a losing scenario, or at any other point they define. Like the ordinary version of AdSense, the advertisements will be contextually targeted and can be tweaked by developers using filtering options.

Developers currently participating in Google’s beta include Konami, ArcadeTown, and Zynga. Although Google is currently accepting applications from other developers, it only accepts established games with over 500,000 plays from sites that derive 50 percent of their traffic from the U.S. and U.K, with some other restrictions as well.