Ad Blocking Has Gaming Pubs Concerned; Vice Launches Interactive Mobile Map

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Now You See Me

For gaming publishers, ad blocking is a big concern. About 40% of gaming media network IGN’s audience deploys ad blockers, Ad Age reports. Interestingly, mobile ad blocker adoption is negligible at about 2% of users, suggesting Apple’s support for such apps has not (yet) been as catastrophic as some feared. There are competing forces at work, says IGN’s Todd Northcutt. Advertisers want to “make sure ads are impactful, robust and video-heavy as much as possible. But that can impact users, too, with heavy ad load times and heavy video ad units.” More.

Pound The Pavement

Vice is launching a new feature, City Guides, which will be an interactive mobile map (starting with Brooklyn, of course). The content will be paired with a new video series, Streets by Vice, that aims to explore iconic city streets, reports Tim Baysinger of Adweek. Potential synergies abound (from deals with bars and restaurants to travel and tourism marketing budgets). The idea is eerily reminiscent of a “Hidden Cities” project being produced by the Financial Times and Google Maps, which will explore non-touristy destinations in select cities. Read on.

Waking From A Dream

Since September, Pinterest has scaled back advertising services outside of the company’s core retail and CPG categories, according to a letter to its clients obtained by Mike Shields of The Wall Street Journal. “I was really surprised to receive a note [saying] that we’d no longer receive such support,” said Bank of America SVP Lou Paskalis, whose brand no longer gets direct Pinterest attention, but must advertise with the social platform via ad tech intermediaries. This news is hard to square with info someone leaked to TechCrunch in October laying out ambitious revenue expectations (from $25M now to $3B by 2018).

Popcorn Flick

When “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” came out in 1998, the only way to see the trailer was to go to the movies. Josh Dzieza writes at The Verge how film marketing has evolved since then. For instance, trailers have gone from standalone pieces (like old album covers), to 15-second frontloaded bites built for social media sharing. Welcome to the new world of entertainment drip campaigns, where trailers are video snippets and movies are trailers for the next film in the franchise. More.

But Wait, There’s More!