It’s time to rethink how in-game ads work

2015 marked the first time in history that more than half of the U.S. population were mobile phone gamers. Even as game investments and acquisitions fell sharply, 2015 was a great year for the mobile game market, with revenues up nearly 20 percent. And yet despite this growth, brand advertising spend has been slow to follow the gaming audience (eMarketer).

In reality, it’s never been easier for advertisers to succeed with in-game advertising. At the recent New York Media Festival, members of the IAB Game Advertising Committee (including my colleague, Andrew Gerhart) discussed some of the key hurdles keeping brand advertisers out of in-game advertising. Among the concerns discussed was that many agencies still feel the technical challenges around creative delivery are just too numerous and insurmountable, given the fragmented state of the mobile market. Some are uncomfortable leveraging the many in-game incentivization tools available. And there still exists a lingering unease around the notion of pairing brand advertising with gaming content, despite the widespread cultural popularity of some gaming titles.