Google Launches In-Game Ads for Flash

Google announced last night that it was launching AdSense for Games, an in-game advertising program initially targeted at casual Flash games. Initial publisher partners include MochiMedia, Zynga, Playfish, Konami and more, with launching marketers eSurance, Sprint, and Sony Pictures. There's been speculation that Lively would be a testbed for the ad network, though Google has said there are no plans to allow advertising in Lively and Christian Oestlien, senior product manager at Google, told VentureBeat that there's no connection yet. The service is still worth keeping an eye on, though.

If nothing else, Playfish, which drew $1 million in funding this summer, describes itself as "working on combining the best elements of casual games, social networks, MMOGs and virtual worlds to create entirely new, more social ways of enjoying great games together."  So far Playfish is focusing on casual games, and Google has been testing ads in them for Facebook, but the option is open.  Likewise, Mochi, while heavily emphasizing casual games, has partnered with virtual worlds like Gaia Online.

Right now the service features over two dozen games, and Oestlien predicts that they can create several hundred million ad impressions over time on sites such as MySpace or Facebook. I don't follow casual gaming trends on social networks as I should (it seems now, at least), but I could see that easily matched or extended both in number of impressions and length of engagement through virtual worlds.

The ads, which run during games or after they're finished, feature characters from the games politely explaining that this content is brought to the user by x or y sponsor. With many virtual worlds working on an ad-supported model and almost as many integrating casual gaming into their offerings, both licensed and internally developed, it's not hard to see a future where Google becomes a large player in virtual worlds, not because of its own platform, but through its ad service.