Casual gaming is a booming market that reaches a quarter of all web users and is growing at 17% annually. Google’s new Adsense for Games will help game developers monetize their traffic and support this growing market segment.

Flash games reach an estimates 200 million users every month and the best ones keep users riveted to the site playing level after level. So far this industry hasn’t found a way to display ads throughout games to its deeply-engaged audience.

Now Google is helping to monetize online games with its beta release of Adsense for Games. At its outset, the ads are only available for the largest and most popular games, those that receive more than 500,000 plays per day and that have their primary audience in the US and UK.

Sites such as Konami, Zynga and Playfish are already rolling out Adsense for Games across their gaming networks and Google is accepting applications for new partners. However, with such high-traffic requirements, Adsense for Games won’t be much help for independent game developers just yet.

Google has major sponsors including Sprint, Sony and Esurance lined up to display ads on games all across the Web. Sponsors can purchase text, picture or video ads to be displayed at the beginning of a new game, after completing a level or at the end of a game.

Questions remain as to how intrusive the ads will be to the online gaming experience. Individual game sites will determine how to integrate the ads and could require users to watch a 15 second video after each game level.

This new source of revenue for online game developers will help to support growth in the industry and fund new development efforts. Advertising revenue could also spread into other segments such as PC or console gaming as a method of supporting free games.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 12:33 pm under Advertising.

Read more entries by Dave Jeyes.
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