rewarded video

While advertisers’ interest in gaming may be growing, their spending commitments seem stuck on pause, judging by Tuesday’s IAB PlayFronts event.

Roblox is making major additions to its still-nascent ad offering, including new integrations to make its ad formats available through Google Ad Manager.

The in-game advertising market’s stagnation is both unsurprising and frustrating. The onus is on the gaming industry to make gaming an essential channel for advertisers, rather than a nice-to-have.

Ahead of her appearance at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview on February 7, Samantha Lim, SVP of gaming strategy for Publicis Media, talks the growth of intrinsic in-game ad inventory and the next steps for in-game programmatic.

Video games can support intrinsic or native in-game ads, as well as ads that are delivered alongside gameplay but exist outside the game itself, like pause-menu display ads and rewarded video. Marketers can also sponsor and advertise on channels related to gaming, such as at esports events and across online streaming platforms, particularly Twitch and YouTube. And we can’t forget about the metaverse.

If there’s one thing that Stacy Spikes, co-founder and former CEO of MoviePass, learned from his experience at the ill-fated movie ticket subscription service, it’s to trust his gut. “If something doesn’t feel right, don’t do it,” said Spikes. He exited MoviePass in 2017 when Helios & Matheson Analytics, a publicly traded information services company, […]

Tilting Point doesn’t just develop its own free-to-play mobile games. It helps other app publishers run performance marketing campaigns and, in some cases, even funds their game development. “We call it progressive publishing,” said CEO Kevin Segalla, who founded the studio in 2012. Over the last few years, Tilting Point has invested tens of millions […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. In-House 2020 We hear a lot about marketers taking advertising in-house, but now politicians are doing it too. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has hired 300 staffers to produce TV and digital advertising and buy digital ads for her presidential primary campaign, Politico reports. Most candidates […]

What does a 13-year-old have in common with a retired woman and a middle-aged man? They all play mobile games. “There’s a misconception that the gaming audience is just kids,” said Brian Ames, president of Activision Blizzard Media (ABM), an advertising division housed within game publishing giant King. “The reality is, though, that gamers are […]

Google is going full-court press on universal app campaigns (UAC) through a partnership with Unity Technologies, a company that makes development tools for game creators. Starting Thursday, Unity’s more than 10 million developers have access to advertiser demand from AdMob via a direct integration. It’s the first partnership of this nature between Google and a […]

Google is testing header bidding – again. But this time it’s for in-app demand. On Thursday, Google announced the kickoff of a beta test to blow up the waterfall mediation model within its mobile ad network, AdMob, and replace it with a unified auction. “Think of it as [Google’s] Exchange Bidding, but for networks,” said Sissie […]

Almost every game developer uses rewarded video to monetize because it’s lucrative – but there’s also a lot not to like about it. “A 30-second video ad just isn’t that engaging, and there’s no reason for users not to put their phone down when the video’s playing and just wait for it to end,” said Tayber […]

App publishers are constantly walking the line between user experience and making money. That’s the “main challenge” facing Baptiste Chardon, the man in charge of handling monetization for French game publisher Ubisoft’s more than 25 free-to-play mobile titles, which range from kid games to less casual offerings. An additional challenge lies in making sure that advertising […]