How To? Best Practices for In-Game Video Advertising

Author: Sam Stern - Woobi

Objective

Achieving outstanding results with in-game video advertising

Challenge:

How to ensure targeting the right audience and achieving maximum brand exposure alongside positive brand engagement?

So, how do we go about it?

We have already established that you got to go with video, and that in-game video advertising, if implemented right, can achieve jaw-dropping results for your brand’s campaign.

Now let’s set a few basic guidelines as to what it means to “implement it RIGHT”…

Setting Clear Campaign KPI's

First step for any campaign is to set its objectives loud and clear. What is it that you wish to achieve? Brand awareness? A viral effect? Click through’s? Installs? User engagement? Registrations?

Set your objectives clearly, and make sure your campaign’s KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) fit them like a glove. This, combined with real-time monitoring and optimization tools will enable you to measure and dictate desired results at any given moment in your campaign’s life cycle.

Sometimes Less is More…

This fast pace world which we live in does not have much tolerance for long content, regardless of how interesting it may be. This is even more so in the field of video advertising, and especially in-game… Strong, short creatives can tell a fantastic story and deliver outstanding results. (See this for example: "Gap - Spring is Coming" ad series.

Viewability…

If you are a player in the online ad industry, a word you tend to hear a lot is “Viewability”, as advertisers are concerned, and rightfully so, that their ads are never actually seen (in fact Google released a study proving Some 56.1% of all the impressions served on the Google display platforms could never have been actually seen). Increasingly, and rightly so, marketers and advertising agencies are insisting they should pay only for ads that actually appear on users’ screens.

This concept does, indeed, make perfect sense, except that the industry can’t agree on cross media acceptable “viewability standards” (for example – the MRC – IAB Standards state a video ad should only be deemed viewable if 50% of it is visible on a user’s screen for at least two consecutive seconds, and 1 second for display ads, Facebook set its own standards for in-stream ads and considers an ad is viewable the instant any part of it appears on a user’s screen).

So – which way is up? - Or: How Can You Increase Your Ad’s Viewability?

In-game audiences are considered the most screen-concentrated, are known to allow for very little external distractions, and even more so when it comes to value-exchange ad-based rewards enhancing their gameplay experience – so your starting point is already significantly better than any other medium. Moreover, leading in-game video advertising platforms enable you, as an advertiser, to improve your cost-effective viewability through:

• Proper views measurement – i.e, count a view only when the user watches 90% of the ad, so that you know your message was delivered.
• Auto-pause ads if the user switches to a new window and only start playing again when they go back to the video player – decreasing distraction options and increasing viewability.
• Click-to-Play! User initiated video ads are proven to increase viewability (as opposed to auto-play).

Real time fraud detection and prevention

Fraud has been an issue since the inception of online performance marketing. As an advertiser you wish to ensure your ad is displayed in a suitable context to complement your brand, viewed by real people (rather than bots), and to the most relevant audiences – maximizing brand safety. Overall, you are seeking to create a positive advertising experience, so here are a few things you need to be sure to implement:

• Engage with ad serving platforms that have developed dedicated fraud detection / prevention mechanisms for each platform (web/social/mobile).
• Don’t settle for vague quality promises – insist on real-time location checks, analysis of user profile and history to ensure quality engagements.
• Having direct integrations with game publishers strongly supports quality ad engagements, in a brand-safe environment.

Targeting, Targeting, Targeting...

One of the most amazing tools enabled by several innovative in-game ad serving technologies is meticulous targeting. Recently developed tools allow you to not only implement targeting capabilities like never before, including the obvious Geo’s and User Demographics, but also based on deeper analysis and user profiling to include device, OS, user preferences, interests, consumption habits, game traits and more. Implementing such tools will ensure your campaign reaches the relevant audience and is engaged with by those with true potential consumer value, creating an uncluttered and cost effective approach.

Strike when hot, or not at all

What if we told you that you can do even better than just meticulous targeting? What if you could get to know your audience on a personal basis, learn their likes and dislikes when it comes to receiving ad content, when they are keen to engage with your brand and when you might be interrupting the users’ experience rather than benefiting them (and your brand)?

Well, you can! Recently launched groundbreaking technologies, such as DMA (Dynamic Mindset Advertising) enable advertisers with outstanding ad-engagement results, significantly outperforming other standard advertising platforms (both traditional and digital). Such technologies focus not only on targeting relevant users with the relevant brands, but mostly on displaying the right content to the right user while in the right mindset, and just as important, determining when not to display an ad as to not interrupt the user's experience .

• From the user’s point of view -– a video ad of a brand relevant to your interests is offered to you when you are at your most receptive mindset, you choose to engage with it, and are rewarded for doing so – can there be a more positive brand experience?
• From the advertiser’s point of view – you can achieve even greater results, highest levels of brand safety and outstanding ROI, seeing completion rates exceeding 90% and way above industry average social engagement rates.

To sum it up:

“Advertisers Can’t Afford to Ignore Gaming” (IAB Report 2014), and that is even more noticeable when it comes to in-game video advertising. When implemented RIGHT, advertisers can achieve each and every KPI, be it brand awareness, social engagement, click through’s, installs, direct response or user app engagement – and enjoy fantastic results in any set timeframe, increasing brand awareness, purchase intent, brand recommendation and overall positive brand sentiment.

Let us know if you’d like to get notification about our next blog post:

Monetizing without Cannibalizing – How to Implement Value Exchange In-Game Advertising Without Cannibalizing Paying User Revenue?