Google Granted Game Patent

One month ago, the search giant acquired Adscape Media, a company meant to design in-game advertisements able to expand the advertising platforms powered by Google. It seems like the company really plans to build a powerful in-game advertising solution because Google recently granted a game patent that provides a lot of information concerning the upcoming product. According to the documentation provided by United States Patent Application, Google wants to distribute advertisements depending on the game type as well as on the user's favorite categories.

"Information about a person's interests and gaming behavior may be determined by monitoring their online gaming activities (and perhaps making inferences from such activities). Such information may be used to improve ad targeting. For example, such information may used to target ads to be rendered in a video game being played by the person," it is mentioned in the description of the patent.

Google filed the patent on September 29, 2005, a date that shows us Google was preparing the move two years ago. The procedure is somehow a little bit complicated by it is based on simple information collected by the technology. The service receives information from the game registration, gaming console or from other gaming subscription details. Every little detailed configured by the user sends important info to the company because Google is able to place a different type of advert depending on the car chosen by the user, the type of his character or even the desired teams for the sport games.

SEO by the SEA published an interesting list with information concerning the position of the adverts displayed during the games:

- First person shooter games - ads could be displayed at vending machines, billboards, posters on walls, a TV screen that the character walks by, etc.
- Racing games - advertisements could be placed on the car or on signage or billboards along the streets and racetracks, or maybe even announced on the virtual audio of the car that the player is driving.
- Sports games - advertisements may be displayed on score boards and along the sidelines of the court/field. Ads may be inserted as textual or spoke dialog, as an audio clip in a virtual radio, etc.