The new advertising game

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Dragon Mania Legends

Everyone is now a player - and Nicolas Pochez, MD UK and Ireland, Gameloft, explains how brands are capitalising

We know gaming is huge - but can you give us a sense of the commercial opportunities now available to brands?

The gaming space is certainly a huge market and savvy brands are doing their best to interact with the massive audiences of engaged players out there. Historically, commercial opportunities for brands have been around display advertising in games and launch tie-ins.

What we're seeing now is an explosion in mobile gaming, which presents brands with an opportunity to reach players at a time that suits them. 2016 is predicted to be the year where mobile gaming overtakes console and PC gaming, and it's this growth that is shifting the commercial behaviour of brands as they look to use in-game mobile advertising as part of their marketing plans. Gameloft alone has a community of 166 million unique monthly players globally.

Brands can now serve advertisements as part of the mobile game that players are interacting with, allowing them to latch on to the emotional connection players have with the content. Mobile gaming also offers rich data on the player audience, so brands can target advertising at those players most likely to follow through all the way to purchase.

How do you see the market growing?

As more and more people choose to play mobile games, we're going to see brands shift greater amounts of their mobile advertising resources to gaming. Whereas previously brands might choose to focus on Facebook and Google advertising, the growth of player audiences will see more digital campaigns run in tandem with in-game advertising.

There are specific advantages that in-game mobile advertising offers, such as an increased willingness from players to engage with interactive advertising and watch video content in its entirety - both of which lead to a higher brand recall for advertisers using complimentary ad formats.

As Sky and ITV prepare to launch a 24-hour eSports channel, what sorts of opportunities are opening up here? Is this an untapped sponsorship goldmine?

The likes of Monster and Red Bull have previously sponsored eSports events around the world, showing the calibre of brands involved in the space. It all ties in to the massive audience of people playing games. The gaming audience is hugely diverse and the sponsorship of eSports events is just another way for brands to get themselves in front of players.

How will the worst of online - ad-blocking, fraud, viewability etc - affect advertisers' ability to monetise through gaming?

The IAB has found that 75 per cent of players are willing to accept advertising in free apps or online games, meaning in-game advertising avoids many of the problems that online advertising is currently suffering.

We took our ad solutions in-house and set up Gameloft Advertising Solutions, because using ad networks resulted in a lack of control over the type of ads we were served, frustrating players with irrelevant advertising.

At Gameloft we see virtually no ad-blocking in-app, largely due to the strict control of the ads that are served to our players, making sure they are relevant and served at appropriate points in gameplay.

We've seen some players have had posted comments online about poor advertising experiences in-game, what's you response?

Our games receive overwhelmingly positive receptions and top consumer ratings, but we recognise there will be a minority of players who've had a technical experience that they haven't enjoyed.

From a purely in-game advertising perspective, we are focused on improving the experience for players to limit this happening. Of course, there will be those who don't like advertising, or who aren't used to in-game ads because they don't play freemium games, where advertising helps support free content.

We moved our ad solutions in-house, and are constantly working to improve our programmatic capabilities, precisely because we wanted to have more control - and give our clients more control - over how advertising is served and where, which is ultimately better for the players too.

Mobile gaming, and in-game advertising on mobile, is a maturing medium and our audience needs to be a priority like that of any other media owner.

How do you see brands making the most of virtual reality?

The gaming space is still in the early stages of virtual reality adoption, as we await the likes of Playstation VR entering the market later this year. I expect we won't see a huge uptake of VR gaming until there is a specific online marketplace that consumers associate with VR content.

Just as Apple did with iTunes and the App Store, VR will take off when the content is readily available in one place.

What does the gaming audience really look like? It's surely more than just teenage boys, but many don't see it that way.

The gaming audience is richly diverse. Across Gameloft games, over 60 per cent of our players are 18 and over, whilst females account for 25 per cent of our player audience - a far cry from the perspective that players are all teenage boys. The modern reality is that we all play games; whether it's on our commute, at home or with family members, games are pervasive in modern culture. We talk about players, rather than gamers.

What can the gaming environment offer brands that other media can't?

Gaming offers brands an opportunity to reach audiences who are already emotionally engaged with the content at their fingertips. Players are immersed in a game, are less likely to be distracted or multi-task with other media while playing, and enjoy being within its environment. Through advertising formats such as custom built mini-games, players are interacting with branded content. More significantly, they'll interact with the brand again and again through repeated game plays.

What challenges do you face in what seems like a pretty fast moving market?

The mobile game market itself is seeing shifts in business models. Most people are familiar with premium, pay-for-download apps, as well as freemium games, where you download the content for free but pay for in-game advantages.

Gameloft is proudly pioneering the use of in-game advertising as a significant part of its business model. Allowing brands to serve targeted ads within Gameloft games means we work directly with brand-side marketers and agencies, whilst ensuring our players are served ad content that is relevant and integrated at appropriate points in the gameplay experience.

Is there a way to monitor how much of in-game advertising is converted to actual sales?

Tracking the impact of any mobile advertising to point-of-sale is something that the industry needs to address, and that attribution across advertising touch points needs better measurement models.

We can already track our high levels of engagement and click-throughs, and have our own Brandlift measurement tool for brand awareness post-campaign. We are constantly looking at how we can refine our measurement and how we demonstrate ROI.

As a consumer games brand in our own right, we would ask the same of our agencies for above and below-the-line campaigns.