M. Chad De Luca’s Post

In-game advertising is not necessarily an "if you build it, they will come" solution for brands. Brands need to weigh their advertising goals with the player experience in different formats. For multi-player platforms like Roblox and Fortnite, there needs to be a promotional element to attract players into their activation. With mobile games, there needs to be either a push (a system activation of an ad) or a pull (an incentive that inspires engagement). But when brands marry great activations and offers with the right promotion, they can achieve outsize outcomes for their campaigns. #AdTech #Gaming #Innovation

🎮 Corporations are increasingly leveraging the gaming industry tо connect with audiences. What's driving these partnerships? 1️⃣ Strong Engagement: Gamers are passionate about their favorite titles and can engage with brands seamlessly. 2️⃣ Immersive Experiences: Games provide a new opportunity to sell in an interactive way. Customers can experience themselves rather than just consume informational advertisements. 3️⃣ Insights into Consumer Behavior: The gaming industry generates and consumes a sizable amount of data through these platforms. This allows many brands to understand important information related to consumer markets. 🔗 Read more about how brands are effectively tapping into gaming for growth and success: https://lnkd.in/d75FrV8e #GameIndustry #ConsumerBehavior #MarketingTips

As the gaming industry continues to soar, brands are discovering new opportunities to engage with consumers in immersive and meaningful ways. It's not just about ads popping up anymore; it's about immersing consumers in custom worlds and delivering contextual experiences that resonate. #Advertising #Gaming #InGameAdvertising #DigitalMarketing #Engagement

"Gaming continues to be a complex ecosystem with numerous touchpoints for reaching audiences. As game publishers work to build ad capabilities and demonstrate the effectiveness of in-game ads, the landscape of advergaming is poised for further evolution." 🎮 🕹 The gaming industry represents a massive audience, with 3.4 billion people globally playing video games across age groups. Despite this, in-game advertising spending remains surprisingly low compared to other forms. This in-depth article in Creative Salon Worldwide takes a look at the power and evolution of advergaming, as well as sharing a nostalgic round-up of brand-led video games from the past. Check out the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eSKEJN64 #CreativeProduction #ContentCreation #AdCampaigns #BrandStorytelling #CreativeAgency #AdCreative #BrandBuilding #AdvertisingAgency #videogames #brands #advergaming

Roblox is a platform to advertise on but most people don't realize how many unique ways there are to bring your message to life. There's programatic ads, custom integrations, owned bespoke experiences and even ads inside social media game/experiences like Clip It. Check out this article from Digiday written by Alexander Lee. Good insight from Ben Sarraille. I was happy to get my two cents in as well for Sawhorse Productions. It's exciting times for immersive marketing. If you aren't exploring these UGC gaming platforms, you aren't reaching Gen Z and Gen A as well as you might think... #roblox #ugcgaming #marketing #metaversemarketing #innovation

The advertising opportunities on Roblox are greatly diversifying and maturing. I was happy to contribute my thoughts in this great Digiday article by reporter Alexander Lee. It explores how traditional programatic ads are coexisting with the more dynamic and innovative custom experience builds on the platform. Keep your marketing creative, innovative and diverse! 🧠 Exciting times ahead. #roblox #immersiveads #innovation #marketing #metaverse

The gaming world is a vast, interconnected ecosystem where gamers move fluidly based on their generation and social preferences. In 2024, brands must adopt a 360-degree approach to thrive on platforms like Fortnite and Roblox. This means combining in-game experiences with robust social media campaigns. As Gareth Leeding from Livewire pointed out, “YouTube has over 100 billion hours of watch time driven by gaming content, and TikTok has over 3 trillion views of gaming content.” In June, Roblox’s top branded experiences attracted over 13 million visits, highlighting the power of a holistic strategy. Brands that fail to execute a comprehensive plan risk being left behind in this dynamic landscape. Credit to Alexander Lee for the insightful article. #Gaming #360Approach #BrandEngagement #Roblox #Fortnite #Brandpartnerships https://lnkd.in/gxfWGZzF

Twitch has teamed up with Halo co-creator Alexander Seropian’s Look North World to create The Glitch, a brand-customizable game world in Fortnite. 1️⃣ #TheGlitch is an integrated galaxy of brand-customized #playable worlds distributed in Fortnite, and promoted by Twitch streamers. It will launch on September 20 at 9a.m. Pacific, the first day of #TwitchCon San Diego. 2️⃣ As the inaugural brand partners taking up residence in The Glitch, Domino's’s and Peloton Interactive will be the first to have their own uniquely crafted in-game worlds reflecting their #brand identity. 3️⃣ #Twitch and the Look North World teams have deliberately baked in player-brand interaction at every corner; for example, players can come across a fully-modeled #Domino’s pizzeria. By engaging in a ‘pizza party,’ their health will be fully restored – allowing them to get back into the action and giving a powerful connection to the brand’s product. 4️⃣ Andrea Garabedian, Amazon Ads head of brand partnership studio noted that Twitch does not have its own ad sales team, but its owner #Amazon sells across all the Amazon properties. The Twitch brand partnership studio is more like a sales support department with the mission of creating excellent Amazon advertising and connections with brands to live interactive and premium content experiences. 5️⃣ “I think of us as an internal creative agency that lives within Amazon Ads, and our goal is to create these engaging brand experiences across Twitch so that brands and streamers and viewers and their community members can get out of brands more than just video and display advertising,” Garabedian said. 6️⃣ #Streamers, from an advertising perspective, are enthusiastic and very effective #storytellers who are able to create vibrant, highly engaged communities around shared interests and because of the live and #interactive nature of Twitch, compared to other places where content is pre-edited and, pre-recorded, Garabedian said. 7️⃣ By embedding brands into games, the parties can open up a two-way conversation with streamers and their audiences and the brands. “They can actually engage and lean in with the #community a little bit more,” Garabedian said.

On top of its highly engaging core gameplay loop, #TheGlitch was built from the start to be easy to stream and fun to watch. 1️⃣ It’ll be highlighted by top Twitch #streamers next to promotions encouraging viewers to play, stream, and continue watching– creating a self-fulfilling feedback loop to drive an audience for the game and thus excitement for the brands within it. 2️⃣ Twitch’s is aiming to provide real utility as a partner for #brands looking to forge meaningful connections to a majority #Gen Z viewerbase–and how marketers can work with beloved streamers to convert those viewers into actively engaged brand advocates. 3️⃣ Domino's’s and Peloton Interactive will have their own moon. Each world is a branded game. If it’s successful, more brands are expected to jump in. 4️⃣ “The future of this is endless. We have the #Twitch community in mind and the streamers in mind when we do this because they are a huge part of what will make this successful,” Garabedian said. 5️⃣ Andrea Garabedian, Amazon Ads head of brand partnership studio said Twitch turned to Look North World because of the team’s triple-A experience and his active focus on #UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) and user-generated content with #branded #experiences. 6️⃣ Garabedian said the team had thought about the project for a long time and were thorough in coming up with the ideas. The Glitch gameplay is clearly going to be streamed on Twitch and played by Twitch streamers for the community. 7️⃣ One example is Maybelline New York, which was looking to promote mascara. To do that, Twitch partnered with a streamer, who did a two-hour stream and sold out the products being advertised through a live shopping experience via a chat bot. 8️⃣ That’s a way for the brand to connect live with the Twitch audience. In a world where in-game advertising is viewed more positively than ads in any other form of entertainment, The Glitch is a big next step in providing aligned brands meaningful access to a coveted and enthusiastic audience. 9️⃣ Branded games often suffer from forced advertising elements that conflict with the actual gameplay, and Twitch wanted to ensure The Glitch was above all else a fun experience for players to engage with while still providing bespoke touchpoints and value for Domino’s, Peloton, and future brand partners.

Something I've noticed while working on a special project: There's a massive whitespace for a resource of brands doing things in gaming. If you've been paying attention, you've seen the deluge of companies (Adidas, NASCAR, Pringles, Ally, etc) show a willingness to bring their brands into the gaming world this year. I'm talking in-game experiences, merchandise collaborations, sponsored creator content, esports partnerships, phygital brand activations, etc — but where do they all live? Rights holders (Epic, Roblox, Capcom, etc) are enabling this by opening up their ecosystems with through partnership programs for official integrations plus options to work with agencies and studios to create custom experiences. Sometimes there's an official campaign website that Google will index, but often times that's not the case — a random social media post will be the only breadcrumb you can find even if you are actively searching. Creators benefit or course, these campaigns need their content and audience as to maximize awareness and engagement — plus bringing their fans along as they play through the experiences ensures campaign viewership. I've spent the last few days tracking down as many examples as I could find through any channel I can find and my brain has become sludge because of it. These campaigns seem to lack media attention to too weak PR from agencies or studios or getting official messaging approved in time didn't happen, but either way — this causes campaigns disappear without evidence. But I want to find them and other people probably do too. There's lots of discovery platforms for UGC game content like maps or game-modes, but no dedicated source chronicling brands' gaming experiments it seems, bummer. Instead, dozens of random marketing websites will cover the same massive campaign (thanks to a big PR push) or feature random activations sporadically — leaving me to type dozens of combinations of word salad to find anything. Y'all got any secret sources or accounts that you follow to stay up-to-date on brand x gaming marketing campaigns? #gaming #esports #marketing