Random Noise

Viewpoint releases in-game ad product

Earlier this week, I noticed the following press release: Unicast by Viewpoint Releases InGame Advertising Product.

Viewpoint is a technology company that has traditionally provided Internet ad technology. They provide both standard and rich ad formats (from banners, to floating ads, expandable ads, interactive ads, even full screen and AIM based advertisements). They work with publishers to provide inventory, and work with advertisers who want to run campaigns. They also gather a lot of data on how users interact with ads and have a system they call “FUSE” for managing running campaigns and obtaining reports on user engagement and ad effectiveness.

However, the news here is that they are now offering in-game advertising as one of their offerings. What’s interesting to me are a few of the features they tout:

• … seamless integration of “swivel” ad placements into the game. Such placements enable dynamic ad rotation based on the priority of the ad unit, without disrupting the game play experience.
• … [the product] tracks a combination of metrics that define billable impressions even when the user is offline.
• … [the product] has a proprietary feature that allows for the delivery of ad units incorporated into “Ad Packs.” These Ad Packs can continually be exchanged for new Ad Packs so that the content is always timely and relevant.

The offline and “ad packs” support are the technologies that interest me the most. Advertising to offline users is a complicated problem. While a game is online it’s possible to download new ads and upload statistics about what ads have been seen (which is incredibly important because advertisers don’t like paying when their ads aren’t seen).

Offline games make gathering statistics impossible. Perhaps the “Ad Packs” technology allows the system to download a series of ads in advance (so when the user goes offline, they can be shown). But there’s no way to upload view statistics so long as the game remains offline. This presents many interesting challenges. For example, if you’re an advertiser, how much should you pay if your ads might have been seen by an offline gamer? How do you keep the ads relevant and up to date if the user has been offline for some time? What about interactive ads - would these even work offline?

Viewpoint is only just getting started in this space, so it may take some time before we know more about how their technology works. Clearly they’re a new player to keep an eye on.

More reading:

• Unicast Dynamic InGame Advertising Product