Monday, 26 March 2007

Google Buys Out Adscape

Google has purchased in-game advertising company, Adspace. The market for advertising within video games is soon becoming a hotbed to tap market share. This move also throws to the forefront the never-ending battle between Google and Microsoft. In this case the battleground is in the realm of advertising inside video games...

Google has purchased in-game advertising company, Adspace. The market for advertising within video games is soon becoming a hotbed to tap market share. This move also throws to the forefront the never-ending battle between Google and Microsoft. In this case the battleground is in the realm of advertising inside video games.

A year ago, in a similar move, Microsoft had bought Massive. The company had coughed up an estimated USD 200 million in the acquisition. On the other hand, sources claim Google has paid USD 25 million for Adscape.

There were many volatile reactions from Microsoft engineers, "Google is a shame to the entire engineering community," one engineer said.

Wikipedia and Yahoo said, "Google is beginning to monopolise on all things media related."

When rumours of the Google-Adspace deal were making the rounds late February 2007, Forrester Research analyst Shar VanBoskirk said, "My take on this probable deal is that it doesn't make a lot of difference to Google, but it does provide significant credibility to the game marketing space".

"Google's challenge will be to show that games work for advertisers outside of the 'obvious' fits like those in the media and entertainment space", he continued.

Michael Cai, director of broadband and gaming at Parks Associates, is rather skeptical about the move, he commented, "Whatever they have in terms of search expertise may not apply to videogame advertising ... It's a different dynamic".