There's some thinking out loud going on regarding the future and viability of ads being integrated in Google News. It's one of the few services offered by Google that does not include some version of AdWords (just it and Google Talk come to mind) and could potentially be a huge source of income. That being said there are some problems. First and foremost, there are so many company names and keywords on a Google News page at any given time that a traditional contextual ad placement would almost be impossible to produce. Secondly, as the story notes, people looking for news bring with them a different mindset than someone just running a search. But the possiblity does exist for paid placement. The question is how and where would those ads look and go? The Google News homepage is pretty full and doesn't leave a lot of white space left over. I'd speculate that, if they actually did add ads they would be placed below each topic/section. Imagine a small ad box placed at the bottom of the Sci/Tech section. It's long been speculated that Google News would only emerge from perpetual beta status once they figured out a way to monetize it. That time could be coming soon.