The world of Fortnite, FIFA and GTA is visited by tens of millions of players every month. This number was still there during the corona measures much higher. While schools, catering and sports clubs had to close, the game industry turned overtime. Games are extremely popular, but not with Dutch advertisers. How did that happen? Does in-game advertising really have potential?
In-game advertising. What is it?
The name says it all: in-game advertising is advertising in games. There are several variations of in-game advertising:
1. Advertise the gameplay of the game. The user is gaming when the ad is visible. He or she is therefore actively engaged in the game.
2. It is also possible to advertise through so-called reward videos. These are videos where the user gets rewards in the game. The user is not actively gaming at that time. We see this form of advertising mainly within mobile games.
3. There are other variants. Think of advertising through (e-sports) influencers, product placement or entering into sponsorship deals with well-known e-sports teams.
Advertising in games is not a new phenomenon. The very first form of in-game advertising comes from 1978. FIFA already showed static brand advertisements on billboards back in 1994. Nevertheless, in-game advertising in the Netherlands is still in its infancy. This is mainly because scalable technology for a long time. Technology has evolved enormously in recent years, making programmatic gameplay advertising a reality. Game developers now know how advertisements and an optimal game experience can co-exist. This has greatly enhanced the advertising potential.
Volkswagen has the scoop in the Netherlands
The quality of (advertisements in) games has therefore increased and thanks to the scalable advertising solutions it becomes more interesting to advertising in games. The growing number of gamers in the corona era has given in-game advertising even more potential. Volkswagen is the first advertiser in the Netherlands to start advertising high-quality console and desktop games. Since May, the first ads have been live in the games DIRT Rally, Football Manager 2020 and UFC 3. UFC 3 is part of EA Sports and the Volkswagen campaign is the first programmatic advertiser in this game worldwide.
The ads are incorporated into the gameplay in a native way, so that the games do not suddenly look different. Most of these adslots are a programmatic replacement of existing pre-programmed utterances. The ads are part of the game in a way that gamers are used to. The development and placement of these advertisements is a collaboration with Greenhouse and in-game advertising platform Bidstack.
Benefits of in-game advertising
Advertising in games has several advantages:
1. Young people over-represented
It is difficult to reach young people through traditional media, but this target group is overrepresented in the game industry. In the case of Volkswagen, games are an interesting platform to create brand awareness and brand consideration. Volkswagen wants to bind the future car leaser or owner with in-game advertising.
2. Screen focust
The Volkswagen ads can be seen in the gameplay itself. Players are very screen focused, because they are actively engaged in the game. In addition, the advertisements get extra visibility through additional streams and uploads on, for example, Twitch and YouTube.
3. New programmatic channel
With these first flight advertisements, a new channel is added to the programmatic landscape in the Netherlands. Currently, the number of games that can be advertised is still limited, but this number is expected to increase considerably in the coming months.
Results
The results of this Volkswagen campaign are very promising. 81% of gamers reached are between 18 and 35 years old. The ads have been seen in 225,000 football games, 25,000 races and 325,000 UFC fights. With an average gameplay of eighteen minutes, the ads are on the screen for a relatively long time.
A brand study was also conducted to measure the effectiveness of the in-game advertisements. The visibility of the in-game ads is 2.4 times higher compared to programmatic display campaigns, where the ads are also displayed longer. Also, the recognition of the message was three times higher than the norm and there is an increase in brand recognition compared to the control group. Finally, the marketing industry also sees potential in game advertising. This case has been nominated for the IAB award Innovating Format or Channel.
About the author: Koen Schreurs is supply chain strategist bij Greenhouse Group.
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