On the surface, buying a video game may seem like a waste of money if you don’t have time to invest hours playing it. But for many advertisers, this is exactly what they’re after- capturing your attention with cartoonish graphics and heavily promoted commercial breaks in order to sell their products.
The “in-game advertising” is a way for companies to advertise their products and services. in-game advertising has been around for many years, but it has just recently become the next big thing in the world of marketing.
An advocacy group accused Roblox Corp.’s online gaming platform of tricking gamers this week, claiming that the company’s platform failed to properly separate marketers’ promotional “advergames” from ordinary gameplay.
Truth in Advertising Inc. filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, requesting an inquiry, claiming that “Roblox has failed to develop any effective guardrails to assure compliance with truth in advertising rules.”
On its platform, Roblox has rigorous standards for promotions and advertisements, according to the company. However, the conflict underlines the challenges that videogames have as a marketing medium.
Investors are pouring money into firms that want to use videogames as a marketing platform to compete with television advertising and web advertisements. Elefund and DIP Capital, as well as NBCUniversal and HTC Corp. of Comcast Corp., are investing in technology that enables marketers to inject their branding directly into the gameplay of popular games.
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In the meanwhile, stalwart advertising agency holding firms like Publicis Groupe SA and Dentsu Group launched specialised gaming units last year to assist advertisers find out where they fit into the videogame ecosystem.
However, proponents of in-game advertising face substantial challenges, such as determining when an ad is seen by players, how advertisements are suitably designated in a medium where they may blend in with gameplay, and media buyers’ prejudices about who plays games in the first place.
“There’s still this ubiquitous conceptual picture of gamers as boys in basements,” Jonathan Stringfield, vice president of global business marketing, measurement, and analytics at Activision Blizzard Media, the ad branch of videogame behemoth Activision Blizzard Inc., said.
Earlier this month, over 700 advertising executives gathered in Midtown Manhattan to see a series of presentations from firms offering in-game advertising space, reinforcing their dissatisfaction.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s first PlayFronts event included various variants on the same message: a lot of people play videogames, and advertisers are losing out if they aren’t purchasing advertisements within them.
A new advertising area has been created.
According to audience research company Nielsen, more than 80% of US gamers are over the age of 18, and 55% are over the age of 35. According to gaming analytics company Newzoo, the number of individuals worldwide who play videogames at least once every six months climbed to 2.96 billion in 2021, up from 2.03 billion in 2015.
Advertisers may buy playable advertising and interstitials that appear between levels of games straight from publishers like Activision Blizzard’s King, which makes “Candy Crush Saga,” and Zynga Inc., which owns “Words With Friends.” They may also purchase advertisements that allow gamers to obtain tiny in-game bonuses, prizes, or other additional material in return for watching, or they can construct their own branded games.
Advertisers can also purchase virtual inventory such as a billboard in a cityscape through PlayFronts presenters such as Bidstack Group PLC, the venture-backed WAM Group Ltd., which trades as Admix, and Anzu Virtual Reality Ltd., which just closed a $20 million funding round backed by HTC and advertising holding company WPP PLC. NBCUniversal, another Anzu investor, is also employing in-game advertising technologies in its sales presentation to sponsors.
Advertisers, on the other hand, aren’t flocking to gaming in droves. In-game mobile advertising sales are expected to climb 34% to $5.49 billion in 2021, according to research firm Insider Intelligence. In 2021, however, marketers in the United States spent $52.2 billion on automated internet video ad buys, increasing 48.3 percent from the previous year.
The advent of play-to-earn videogames, in which players exchange NFTs, provides a look into how the metaverse can entice users with monetary incentives, as well as the potential for backlash. Josephine Chu is the author of this image.
Virtual bumps on the path
Given the violent nature of some games and the unpredictability of some live, multiplayer environments, particularly those targeted at children, some advertisers consider the videogaming sector risky for their brands, according to Kieley Taylor, global head of partnerships at GroupM, a media investment company owned by WPP.
There are even additional technological hurdles to overcome.
At the first advertising PlayFronts, Zoe Soon, vice president of the IAB’s Experience Center.
IAB photo
When compared to inventory on a scrolling website, for example, the number of ads publishers can fit inside a game without disrupting the player experience is still relatively low, and it costs more for the ads themselves to be tailored for in-game insertion, though the practice is becoming easier, according to media executives. Advertisers would also find it more difficult to determine how many people saw their commercials than in other well-established channels, such as television and streaming, they noted.
To alleviate some of this apprehension, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) wants to alter its measuring criteria for in-game commercials. The industry’s definition of what constitutes a videogame ad impression is based on rules set in 2009. In the light of technological advancements in the videogame and ad-tech industries, such rules are already out of date, and they are incompatible with how marketers assess digital advertising across various media in 2022.
According to Zoe Soon, vice president of the IAB’s Experience Center, a section that helps marketers understand emerging platforms, the group aims to release its first draft of the new guidelines later this year.
Better measurement might entice more media buyers to attempt advertising in videogames, just as it did a decade ago with mobile advertising and before that with web advertising, according to GroupM’s Ms. Taylor.
“So I’m very certain that we’ll get there,” she remarked.
Katie Deighton can be reached at [email protected]
Corrections & Amplifications The trade organization for the online advertising industry is the Interactive Advertising Bureau. An earlier version of this article incorrectly called it the Internet Advertising Bureau. (Corrected on April 22.)
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The “which of the following best describes how advertising works in a freemium game?” is a question that was asked on Quora. The answer to the question is that advertising in a freemium game has two forms, one is traditional and the other is gameplay-based.
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