Audio ads in mobile games are measurably increasing advertisers’ business, according to a new case study published by the audio advertising company Odeeo.
The Israel-based startup Odeeo has raised millions of dollars in pursuit of its mission of integrating audio ads into mobile games, but this format currently remains a relatively niche part of brands’ broader digital advertising plans. In an effort to boost advertisers’ confidence in the channel, Odeeo partnered with McDonald’s, the marketing agency Admerasia and measurement company Claritas to pull the hard numbers on a month-long in-game audio campaign by McDonald’s intended to reach Asian American consumers. (A McDonald’s representative declined to comment on this article.)
The result of Odeeo’s study demonstrated that users’ growing attention and engagement with in-game audio ads have translated into meaningful business results. Notably, the study measured a 15-percent increase in incremental orders — consumers who would not have otherwise made an order — as a result of the campaign, as well as a 50-percent lift in app installs and a 50-percent lift in registration.
“I think these results stand up against any type of channel, and are exciting especially for a unique type of media — in this case, gaming and audio,” said Claritas vice president of sales Jason Fialkov in an interview with GamesBeat. “For them, it really validates the work that they’re doing.”
Since its founding in 2021, Odeeo has gradually developed a range of partnerships with large mobile game developers including Supercent, Gameloft and SayGames. Since 2023, the company’s head count has grown by “double digits” every year, according to Odeeo head of U.S. agencies and brands Zack Weiss, who declined to share a specific number. Last year, the company opened its first U.S. office in New York.
“We’re going to conferences, hiring, scaling, doing bigger case studies with bigger names,” Weiss said. “Really, the sky’s the limit — and throughout the year, you’re going to see some other very large announcements of what’s to come.”
Weiss said that Odeeo is currently working with “thousands of different brands, programmatically and directly,” but acknowledged that McDonald’s is one of the largest brands the company has worked with yet.
“I don’t think anyone is coming close to the impact that McDonald’s has with us at the moment, but there’s a lot of different names that we’re working with that we’re trying to grow and add to the pipeline in order to come up with more case studies like this,” he told GamesBeat in an interview.
In general, audio ads are a relatively underleveraged channel compared to overall audio consumption in the U.S., which is both a source of chagrin and potential growth for companies whose products and services are built around audio advertising. Concrete numbers — particularly those that show business outcomes, like the figures in Odeeo’s case study — could help bring up advertisers’ budgets in this channel.
“Audio has such a small piece of the overall pie, right? Audio gets about 5 percent of media investment, and some numbers say about 20 percent of actual media time in the U.S.,” Fialkov said. “So, we believe it’s an under-invested channel.”