What’s next for mobile gaming after Pokémon Go? | M&M Global

What’s next for mobile gaming after Pokémon Go?

M&M Global spoke to Gameloft North Europe managing director Antonin Lhuillier to find out how brands can make the most of in-game advertising.

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All eyes are on the gaming sector, as reports show that social and mobile gaming will become the fastest growing segment of the multi-billion dollar industry. The development of new platforms and innovative gaming options is further propelling this growth – seen with the recent explosive rise of Pokémon Go.

French video game developer and publisher Gameloft launched its own in-game advertising solution in 2014, working to directly address brands and agencies through its worldwide teams.

“We have players everywhere and we try to be almost as exhaustive as our player base in terms of selling our inventory and offering our advertising solution,” said Lhuiller.

He describes Pokémon Go story as very positive news for the sector, discussing the difference between mobile web and in-app: “In-app is still like the hidden bit of the iceberg for many advertisers. It’s harder to deal with because you don’t have cookies so you have to find other ways to identify players.

“Some of the brands feel more comfortable by reconciling with cookies and device IDs, which is kind of a dream. I mean you can hardly reconcile more than 15% of the IDs so it’s more like an unknown territory.”

He also felt that the Pokémon Go has a “very nice personality” which has been well executed. According to Lhuiller, the developer had created an augmented reality game which they resumed the concept of with a powerful license.

“We don’t use augmented reality in our games but we have geolocation so certainly it’s a way forward,” he added. “We need to find a smarter way to use it as something more than a gadget.”

Marketers can still do more

Gameloft has already worked with a range of brands, from Aston Martin to Coca-Cola, using its own technology systems.

“The way we do it now is much more straightforward in terms of selling the space in our games and I’d say we managed to convince a good number of brands last year to work with us, even if we are new on the market,” he commented, adding that some brands can be conservative and mostly look to traditional platforms like TV and outdoor.

Pushing things forward, Gameloft is developing new integrations to represent brands in-game. Currently, formats like mini-games, which allow players to engage in around 30 seconds, are popular because they utilise the players’ passion for the game, putting the brand in a positive light.

However, Lhuiller feels that marketers can still do more.

“I think that many marketers are still mostly looking into TV and things such as outdoor in a very traditional way; it works because even if you don’t have targeting, you have engagement,” he says.

“On mobile gaming, you can definitely go for a much more targeted approach and enrich better engagement, and in particular the target that everyone wants to address, the Millennials, who are spending a lot of time on mobile gaming so for this type of demographic, mobile gaming is the way forward.”

Gameloft has developed a format called Buddy Pack as an innovation on the emotional impact of the gaming format, allowing advertisers to insert and incentivise a video at a particular moment of the game, such as when players win or lose, or have lost many times.

“It can be a happy moment or a discouraging moment; we offer advertisers to insert a small message for players so it’s definitely a great way to encapsulate the positive image of the brand in a strongly emotional experience.”

‘It’s not only about making a good game’

Lhuiller says that he has repeatedly seen brands bring their own apps into the market.

“There are some success stories of course, but they are quite seldom,” he suggests.

“I think it’s more a matter of really not seeing the hard reality of this market where it’s not only about making a good game, I mean that’s a challenging thing to do,” says Lhuiller, referencing the struggles of finding a good game designer, ensuring the retention of your game is fair, as well as monetising and regularly updating the game to follow new Google, EU and OST guidelines.

“We have done some campaigns with clients who are willing to push their own apps and games, but we usually encourage them to go for in-game advertising in existing games because they already have a proven community of players and a strong team behind adding content and so on.”

Looking to the future, Lhuiller says Gameloft will researching more sophisticated, mobile-friendly formats.

“We move forward also with targeting so we do have a lot of info on our players like age and gender. It may look simple but we hear very positive back from brands and agencies and so on, on the fact that our data is quite powerful.

“For mobile you also have advanced technologies like programmatic potentially pushing the boundaries for brands where they can really select an audience so that’s quite nice, it opens opportunities.”

Anna Dobbie

Reporter

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