• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, August 28, 2024

One of the most interesting emerging media-buying categories for me in recent years has been the ad-supported casual gaming marketplace -- for a couple of reasons, both having to do with what could be part of the next generation of planning, buying and messaging for all media.

For one thing, in-game advertising is a petri dish for advertising in the metaverse, because unlike the historic "interrupt and repeat" model for most media platforms, it's all about engaging consumers within the context of what they're doing on the medium in the first place.

So I was keen to read a new study released this morning showing that a unique type of advertising formats native to casual gaming -- "playable ads" -- is finally gaining some traction.

The study, "The State of Games Media Buying," fielded by programmatic media-buying platform Mintegral, finds playable ads have more than doubled their share of casual game formats, and now account for 7% of all ads in the category.

That's encouraging, because playable ads require more of a heavy lift -- and arguably a different way of applying creativity -- than conventional banner of video ads, which can more easily be adapted from pre-existing ads developed for other media channels.

The study also finds that playable ads tend to be used more in hyper-casual and puzzle-based games, with so-called role-playing games (RPG) the least likely genre. If you ask me, this is a missed opportunity for brands, because role-playing seems like a natural way to integrate an ad experience organically into a gaming environment and in a way that actually engages a consumer, not takes them away from the action.

Another area of game-based media-buying that is an important test bed for the future of all media is so-called "rewarded ads," sometimes referred to as "rewarded opt-in advertising," which is a sometimes counterintuitive, but some argue inevitable model for the future of a Web3 media marketplace.

In fact, the casual game industry more or less pioneered the rewarded ad model, which increasingly is being adopted by other media, formats and platforms. But it still seems most organic in a game-playing experience, where in order to unlock a level or a cheat or some other premium or freemium game experience, the user has to pay attention to an ad underwriting it.

Alas, the Mintegral report doesn't actually benchmark the rewarded ad format, but it does note that "rewarded ads gain real traction" in a rapidly evolving marketplace.