With all the recent buzz, controversy and explosive predictions surrounding in-game ads, we were eager to attend the Wednesday MI6 panel to learn how marketers and advertising networks would continue the fascinating, ongoing quest to attract our eyeballs.
Led by Julie Shumaker, senior vice president of worldwide sales for Double Fusion (currently our favorite in-game ad company), the panel was asked to describe the biggest challenges they faced in bringing ads to the gaming consumer. Weighing in on the matter were Dave Martin, interactive media director of Ignited; Glenn Broderick, executive director of gaming at AT&T; and Andy Swanson, the senior director of strategic sales and partnerships at Ubisoft.
Barriers to entry
Asked to name his major barrier to in-game advertising success, Swanson laid down what would soon become the panel's main theme: the need for proper advertising metrics for games.
Probably the number-one thing right now that's stopping us is an inconsistency in measurement. I think with advertising in general -- whether it be online, whether it be television -- you have some trusted source of measurement...what determines an impression? How do you come up with premium content? What do you charge for that? What's the value of a dynamic ad versus static advertisements? I think what we're grappling with is making this simple for the advertising community to purchase. You need to know what you're getting, and what the valuation is.
Broderick agreed, but wouldn't limit his barriers to entry to a lack of proper metrics. More important to him than measurement was the inconvenience and confusion from having to deal with multiple ad partners:
If I want to buy Madden, right now I'm going to have to go to...theoretically, 3 different ad partners to get inside that game. When they decide what to do, we're going to have to go with their solution; we're going to have to go with [EA in-game advertising partner] Massive on the Xbox side, and then on the PlayStation side, we're still figuring out what that means. From an efficiency standpoint, you could either go to this one ad network, spend and get guaranteed CPM...or you could go over to this untested medium and have to manage three different campaigns. We have to get past that hurdle, and then focus on the measurability.
Swanson added a third barrier -- the differing technology on the three major advertising platforms (PS3, 360, PC) leaves in-game ad solutions "at the mercy" of platform technology to some degree.
But are they even valuable?
Having agreed that metrics and standardization are of critical importance (to the extent that they agreed to meet again after the conference to discuss how they can help that along) the question of in-game advertisement's value was broached by Shumaker, who asked "What value does a 2D billboard in a racing game have?"
She was met with silence, then nervous laughter, before Martin brought up the parallel "Does a fantasy advertising experience have the same value as a real advertising experience?" Who knows if gamers getting up out of the virtual driver's seat will not discard the virtual ads just as they might discard that virtual reality as they re-enter the real world?
Swanson argued that you could ask the same of product placement for Heineken in a James Bond movie -- but the difference is the player cannot be James Bond. They can, however, become engaged in the fantasy. But he raised concerns about making sure the content "feels right" for the game.
Broderick, a believer in a "do no harm" pseudo-Hippocratic Oath for advertising, further stressed the need for contextually relevant ads by voicing his disgust for the famous example of virtual Pizza Hut ads in EverQuest, declaring that if the context of the game didn't have something to do with communication, there probably wasn't a reason for AT&T to be there. Shumaker, however, wondered if ads couldn't be relevant by branding rather than context. If Pizza Hut makes perfect sense for EverQuest gamers, than why not advertise?
Martin agreed that marketers need to give gamers what they want. "If elves are ordering pizza," he addressed the audience, "then we'd better put some pizza in there."
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