Google ready to offer in-game ads for web games?

"Sources close to the matter said that the company has developed an in-game advertising technology that allows it to insert video ads into games," says the report, adding that a demo shows in-game characters themselves presenting ads to players with 'words from our sponsor'-like intros.

The report ads that Google could move quickly as the technology is finished.

Google has been expected to make a move into in-game advertising - challenging dominating firms IGA and Double Fusion, plus their contemporaries MochiAds and GameJacket - since it acquired AdSense last year, but has been slow to move.

“I don’t know what’s taking them so long,” one VentureBeat source is quoted as saying. “They could move into this market very quickly, given what they have shown off.”

Apparently, Google's in-game ad tech works with console games, PC games, web-based PC games and mobile games - although it hasn't been demoed directly to insiders just yet, the report adds.

The reports adds that Google's recently launched Lively virtual world may in fact be a testing ground for the technology going forward.