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It is the story of the day. Scan the headlines and everywhere that touches technology has a tidbit on the subject. The mysterious G-phone, a myth as exotic as an udumbara flower and as circulated as a chain email has finally been revealed. The urban myth quashed.

Today, Google revealed as widely expected there will not be (at least for now or the near future) a Google branded cell phone; no gPhone to challenge the iPhone. Instead, Google has been applying its considerable software development skills to the development of a next generation open-source mobile operating system platform. Engineers with analog and cellular design experience were there for optimization, for marrying software to hardware, not to reinvent the phone itself.

Andy Rubin, head of Google’s mobile platforms said unequivocally, "we’re not building a GPhone; we are enabling 1,000 people to build [it]."

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Back in July, via Peacock Equity, GE and its subsidiary NBC Universal, invested in in-game advertising network IGA Worldwide $25m Series B Financing. Now in a move best labeled as somewhat curious, NBCU and IGA have struck an operational deal too.

According to a press release issued Tuesday, IGA and NBCU have made a pact that will allow NBCU’s ad sales force to sell inventory from IGA’s "Radial" in-game ad network.

In-Game Advertising offers the ability to serve dynamic advertising within a video game. The common example is the billboard in the background of a sporting game. Once upon a time it might have been available for a one time "product placement" where a sponsor bought the rights in perpetuity. But now, thanks to Internet technologies, in-game ads allow that billboard to be sold repeatedly and managed as if it’s real advertising real estate. Through net connections (for consoles or computer based games), the billboard (or other ads) can be changed similar to the way banners are changed on a web page. With in-game ads, media buyers can buy time-based ads and game publishers can derive an ongoing stream of revenue.

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A key precursor to advertising dollars is the ability to effectively measure audience response and behavior.  It starts with the basics: how many people are watching.  Then it gets to the who and where.  Eventually, if there’s enough data to determine it, it becomes more and more targeted, more and more specific.  The more you know about the audience, the better you can serve advertising to their interests.  And the more you can target the advertising, the higher you can charge for it.

This kind of information based advertising has been the formula for Internet billions.   It’s at the core of Google’s success.   And now Google is hoping to expand that formula to television.   Doing so, however, will require partners and new techniques.

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Some analysts are forecasting the gaming industry will grow 9% per year to $47b by 2009. The fledgling In-Game advertising industry earned a meager $55m last year but riding on the backs of the gaming world’s growth, it too is expected to explode; reaching upwards of $2b by 2012. With that scale and growth it’s only natural to see the 800lb gorillas of gaming and advertising getting involved.

Today, Sony (Corp of America “SCEA”) took the plunge and announced they too were getting involved. To plot strategy and explore the space, Sony created a unique division. Darlene Kindler, who was an early executive at Nintendo and recently the VP of Publishing at Google acquired in-game advertising Adscape Media, will helm the unit.

In-Game advertising has been profiled before on Metue. Click to Read More

In 1983 Anheuser Busch paid Midway Games to make all the beers served in their popular game, Tapper, be labeled Budweiser’s.  Fast forward a few decades and now that curious sponsorship has become the forefather to one of the hottest segments in marketing: In Game Advertising.

A lot has changed in the decades since Midway’s Tapper.  Today, gaming consoles have internet connections and ads placed in the games, thanks to powerful graphics chips, need not be static or two dimensional.  Today, instead of a fixed poster in the background, or a product label on a beer bottle, a billboard in the background of a game can come alive with video and sound.    Today, the labels on a virtual NASCAR racing car can be sold to marketers for sponsorship just as they might have been on a real life race car.  Today, a three dimensional soda can is able to provide a virtual facsimile in the game of what exists in reality.

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Everyday seems to have at least a few headlines about Google.  Much of yesterday’s Google-related news centered on the announced release of Google’s redesigned web analytics platform, Google Analytics.  The improved user-interface and tools made with the added assistance of the folks brought on in the acquisition of Measure Map will no doubt be a help to web marketers and web masters from beginner to pro. 

The torrent of news drowned out a small, whisper of information: Google has ported its RSS reader/Feed Aggregator, Google Reader, to work with the Nintendo Wii and the Opera browser embedded in it.  The Google engineers even went so far as to insure that it works with the buttons and interface of the Wii’s innovative controller.   News of the effort was mentioned on the Google Reader’s official blog

The original Google Reader is technically still a Google Labs development project and not a fully functional, supported service/feature.  The Wii, for all its strengths and popularity, is for now (for most users) a gaming device and not a home-media PC/Device or a platform for web surfing.   Combined, those facts mean the unannounced side-project to join the two is well below the radar – probably less notable than hackers modding Apple TV to run non supported video formats as reported in March.  Still, the effort at Google might prove meaningful, or at least a glimpse of the future.

For one thing, Nintendo has been active in adding functionality to the Wii beyond its highly demanded gaming abilities and user interface.  Back in January, Nintendo partnered with the Associated Press and other news agencies to provide news through the Wii’s integrated Opera web browser.  (See the Metue article here  for more info on that announcement).

It’s also no secret that Google, like many companies, sees’s a convergence of technologies leading to some form of set-top appliance integrating the Internet, the Entertainment Computer and our Television.  (Note: I use the term appliance and set-top very loosely, it’s far to soon to know whether streaming technologies, hardware, set-top boxes, gaming platforms, DVR’s or the other potential competitors will bring the best-in breed solution for making all this happen).

Google’s first major recognition of the value of gaming, and PC-TV convergence came a few months back when they followed Microsoft’s lead and bough an In-game advertising company.  In Google’s case – Adscape Media (see here for more information)

Google’s application of its RSS Reader/Personal news aggregator to the Wii may be nothing more than a group of engineer’s “amusement-project.”  There’s no reason to insinuate it’s part of a master plan being implemented at Google.  I’m not reading much into it.  I definitely wouldn’t speculate on an upcoming Nintendo and Google partnership, but the development is fascinating.

I’d love to check it out, if only the Wii wasn’t so hard to get.

Video sharing site YouTube is the 4th most visited website on the planet (According to Alexa Rankings).   It’s now going to give something back to some of the users who helped create that popularity (and who helped the company get the $1.65b purchase price Google paid to acquire the company last November).

Late last week, YouTube announced it was finally making good on a promise made in January to share advertising revenue with some of its more prolific and well known members.   The people behind such magazine-cover-spanning, pop-culture hits like Lonelygirl 15 (actress Jessica Rose was on the cover of Wired, etc) and LisaNova (star Lisa Donovan has been all over the press and is now appearing on MadTV) will be getting nearly the same benefits as commercial content partners who broadcast on the site.

Specific details have not been disclosed yet but at the heart of things, the benefits are suggested to include an approximately 40 to 50% share of revenue generated from ads wrapping the members individual broadcasts. 

Unlike smaller competitors Revver , which shares ad revenue with all its uploading members, or Guba, which pays affiliate fees for registrations referred by its users,  the revenue sharing agreements at YouTube will not extend to any (or arguably even many) YouTube users.  Only a small selective group will get the rewards, at least initially.

Until more information is revealed, any guesses about what this will actually entail, or what will follow, are largely pie-in-the-sky speculation.  Still, there is some small basis for believing that this is a measured first step towards a possible roll out to a wider portion of YouTube’s users.  Dating back months, and including a speech co-founder Chad Hurley gave in Switzerland, there has been talk around and inside YouTube about providing more incentive for users to create and present their original user-generated content.  Revenue sharing, mixed with the popularity of the site relative to competitors, makes an easy and obvious means for doing that.

While I have little basis other than intuition and guess work to justify the argument, I think YouTube may actually be contemplating (or trying to build) an Adsense-like platform to allow the administration of video-wrapping ads for a much wider pool of users within their site. Click to Read More