Maybe they are testing this out with Google's backing? Google often uses a few companies to test out new products.

It's not a software, it's a local web app. I wonder how they target the ads as the pages aren't crawlable by Google.

Didn't Opera have Google Ads before? So I guess it is with Google's backing.

It's software Ionut. All day long.

And yeah. it might be that Google offered this as a test trial.

Spiceworks gets some juice and Google gets the chance to experiment.

As far as targeting goes, I guess either they have static (non-contextual) ads, or they need a 100% open internet connection all the time.

> It's not a software, it's a local web app

Be it software as the article states or a web app, Google doesn't (at least not always) allow this... I was not alllowed to put AdSense on the chat web app! http://blogoscoped.com/chat/

LOL .. nice chat feature.. Never knew it existed.

Maybe this is the new Google service you talked about at http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-07-25-n72.html ? Ads to sponsor your OSS work.

I've installed the app and I solved the mystery.

The local page includes an iframe a webpage that receives encoded keywords and sends AdSense ads. Examples of iframe:

http://frontend.spiceworks.com/a/router/noSuchObje.rhtml?uuid=d91b58a0-fe1c-0128-3c0b-0011856b5722
http://frontend.spiceworks.com:80/a/backup_software.rhtml?uuid=d91b58a0-fe1c-0128-3c0b-0011856b5722"

The uuid is a user id, but the ad has this code:
google_page_url=document.location
so the crawler should follow the parent doc.

I don't think they do that with Google's blessing, but I might be wrong.

Spiceworks has $5 mil from Austin Ventures...I'm sure they have Google approval.