Abstract. For any locally compact group G, we show that any locally tight homomorphism from a real directed semigroup into MI(G) (semigroup of probability measures on G) has a 'shift' which extends to a continuous one-parameter semigroup. If G is a p-adic algebraic group then the above holds even iff is not locally tight. These results are applied to give sufficient conditions for embeddability of some translate of limits of sequences of the form {v kn} and # E M 1 (G) such that z(#) = #k, for some k > 1 and zeAut G (cf. Theorems 2.1, 2.4, 3.7).