Even brands that people associate with gaming are new to in-game advertising.
Earlier this year, Sony Electronics promoted its INZONE line of gaming noise-canceling earphones with its first in-game advertising campaign. The advertisements targeted Saudi Arabian gamers between the ages of 18 and 44 who played PC and mobile games.
According to Karan Makwana, digital marketing manager for the Middle East and Africa at Sony Electronics, the company was first “quite skeptical” and considered the campaign more as a chance to test a new media outlet than as a means of achieving results. However, he said that the outcomes surpassed Sony’s expectations.
According to a Happydemics survey, the campaign increased brand image by 42% and brand consideration by 35%. According to Makwana, the findings encouraged Sony to explore in-game activations further, maybe incorporating advertisements into its console games in the future.
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Entering the market for in-game advertisements
Sony Electronics and Sony Interactive Entertainment, the company that makes the PlayStation, are two different businesses, even though any conversation about Sony and gaming automatically brings up the PlayStation system and the games that go with it.
According to Makwana, this meant that Sony Electronics could not base its outreach to gamers on any information obtained from the PlayStation division. As a result, it had to modify its current understanding of its audience for consumer electronics to fit a new media landscape.
However, Sony didn’t want to make a mistake. Before jumping in, it spent almost a year planning its strategy for the in-game ad industry, he added.
In his early years, Makwana played “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City,” which initially piqued his interest in the concept of in-game advertising. He was astounded by its immersive open environment filled with advertising for fictional brands long before in-game ad tech existed.
However, before Sony and Makwana felt confident enough to enter this new marketing channel, they required some guarantee.
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According to Makwana, the IAB Tech Lab’s March release of best practices for in-game creative and updated rules for in-game ad measurement in 2022 contributed to that reassurance. According to him, that offered Sony the assurance that it could create content that would function in in-game settings and accurately gauge the impact of its ads.
Seeking innovative direction
For the campaign, Sony also required some direction from Anzu, their in-game advertising platform. Anzu collaborated with UM MENAT, a division of UM Worldwide, Sony’s agency, to create a programmatic direct campaign and choose in-game content that would appeal to Sony’s Saudi Arabian target market.
Sony inserted static display and in-game video advertisements into a variety of PC and mobile properties. These included the racing game Asphalt 9 from Gameloft, the open-world adventure Gangstar Vegas, the social networking game Dragon City from Socialpoint, the tennis simulator Tennis Clash from Wildlife Studios, and the multiplayer sandbox game Growtopia from Ubisoft. To make sure they could assist Sony in reaching its target demographic, Anzu used first-party data from each of the game developers.
Using pre-existing creative, Sony conducted a modest trial campaign in December and January to test the in-game inventory’s quality using both Sony’s own benchmarks from other media channels and the IAB’s measurement criteria.
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Makwana stated that the quality of the impressions pleased Sony right away. According to Makwana, the average in-view time for display advertising was 4.5 seconds, which was longer than the IAB’s suggested threshold of two seconds. He said that the video completion rate exceeded Sony’s estimates as well.
The test pilot’s budget was then increased by Sony for a wider campaign that ran from March to April. Over 10,000 hours of on-screen time were spent on the advertisements, and Anzu generated roughly four million viewable impressions throughout the campaign’s two phases.
Sony and Anzu collaborated to customize the campaign’s second phase’s creative to the target demographic and the properties where the advertisements were featured.
According to Simon Sworn, creative director at Anzu, this imaginative personalization included minor details like including a picture of a steering wheel or a tennis racquet if the advertisements were shown in Asphalt 9 or Tennis Clash. However, it also included more basic factors, such as ensuring that the product photos and the brand logo were big enough for players racing down a racetrack to view them. Alternatively, making sure the video advertisements were brief enough—no more than six seconds—to be digested without interfering with the game.
According to Sworn, the IAB’s creative best practices were a source of inspiration for Anzu’s creative team. It also drew on some of the results of earlier Anzu research, such as a study it conducted with the attention monitoring company Lumen, which found that while video advertisements are excellent at generating buy intent, display ads are better at raising awareness.
Additionally, Sony tailored the ad language to appeal to gamers by emphasizing the 360-degree spatial sound of their earphones, which enhances gaming immersion.
Focusing on the audience that is digitally native
According to Makwana, the outcomes were better than anticipated, and Sony’s brand lift figures from this campaign were higher than those from other channels.
According to him, Sony observed a rise in Google search traffic for the INZONE line of products, increased traffic to the product site, and heavier foot traffic at retailers after the campaign, in addition to the Happydemics study’s findings of a 42% increase in brand image and a 35% increase in brand consideration. However, he declined to provide specifics.
According to Makwana, Sony Electronics is now optimistic about the in-game channel because it believes it is a far more effective means of reaching its youthful, tech-savvy, digital-first audience than traditional TV advertisements, which the company’s Middle East and Africa business has completely discontinued.
In addition to continuing these in-game placements, Makwana stated that it is eager to experiment with various activation types. For instance, it is thinking about starting gaming events in important markets and is investigating creating specially sponsored maps for specific games.
According to Makwana, Sony naturally expects to run advertisements in PlayStation games in the future. However, the industry is still constructing the console’s programmable pipelines.
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