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Google patent for game ads evaluates user actions, psychology

A recently-published Google patent application highlights a new system for …

Imagine a small bit of code that runs on either a PC or a console and monitors user behavior in video games—everything from the sort of car that people drive in racing sims to the conversations that they have in WoW. Imagine that this code examines saved game files to see what titles are currently being played, and imagine that it could look inside those files to learn about a user's game choices and abilities. Now imagine that all this data is relayed back to a central server, where it is sliced, diced, and deep-fried, then used to serve highly-targeted ads that appear onscreen. Sound like spyware? Nope, it's a new in-game advertising system that Google hopes to patent.

The patent application in question has been attracting attention since it became public several weeks ago (it was filed back in 2005). The inventor is listed as Shumeet Baluja, a staff research scientist at Google whose work has been profiled before on Ars when another patent surfaced that explained how to use a laptop's microphone to monitor television shows. In the current patent, the monitoring approach is extended to video games, where "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)."

This information is used to build up a more detailed portrait of a particular gamer then generic demographic information can provide. Conceptually, it's a natural outgrowth of the customization and targeting that advertisers have been craving since the beginning of time, but it goes further than previous ideas by actually watching how gamers play. Here's an example of the sort of detail such a system could collect:


This goes way beyond what sort of car a person likes to drive or whether they prefer to play RPGs as a night elf; this system would examine and attempt to interpret people's words and actions when they game. Beyond the obvious privacy questions, this also raises the issue of whether a player's in-game actions really translate into usable information for advertisers. Someone who drives nothing but BMWs in racing games might in fact be a good target for BMW advertising, but would someone who runs around shooting cops and consorting with hookers in Grand Theft Auto really be a good target for Smith & Wesson and Angie's High Class Escorts? One hopes not.

The Google patent also points out that the ads in question can be more than just pictures on a billboard and gives the example of using a "sponsored" narrative voice. Here, from the patent, is an actual, I-kid-you-not example of how this might work: "As another example in a car racing game, after a user crashes his Honda civic [sic], an announcer could be used to advertise by saying for instance 'if he had a Hummer, he would have gotten the better of that altercation.'" Doesn't that sound awesome?

Finally, the patent raises the issue of saved games, which offer "a valuable source of information to the advertisers." The patent suggests that this information can be used to determine which games currently interest players but goes on to suggest that "the system could even examine the game state-based and user information of the various games saved on the memory card."

Google, which picked up in-game advertiser Adscape earlier this year, has clearly been thinking about this issue for several years prior to the acquisition. Given the current size of the in-game advertising market and the recent moves into it by both Microsoft and Intel, it was obvious that this was a slice of the advertising pie that Google would someday stick a fork into as well. With the production cost of games soaring, plenty of developers have proved willing to embrace in-game advertising as a way to earn some extra revenue. If Google's system is eventually commercialized and can truly deliver more targeted advertising, someone, somewhere is bound to try it out. Will gamers accept such an intrusive system?

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