Despite this influx of activity, many marketers still believe it’s too difficult — or at least not worth the trouble — to measure the performance of gaming ads, particularly those of the intrinsic in-game variety. “It’s understandable why most big advertisers are a little bit hesitant about playing in this space,” said Mike Sepso, CEO of the gaming and esports infrastructure company Vindex. “They’ve been told they don’t understand it, they’re outdated, they don’t get it — but they haven’t been given any tools to better understand it”.

While it can be difficult to navigate the current landscape of gaming advertising measurement, improvements are on the way. In February, the Interactive Advertising Bureau assembled a task force of industry stakeholders to develop new measurement standards for the viewability of in-game ads and help brands become more comfortable operating in the space. The new standards are already in the drafting phase and will likely be finalized for public use and MRC certification in June.

But brands are interested in ramping up their gaming advertising activity now — not in a few months. In response, companies in the space have already developed new tools and best practices for the measurement of gaming advertising. “We believe measurement is a critical part of activating in gaming to ensure that every dollar is working to drive equity or sales,” said Rob Master, vp of media and marketing for North America at Unilever. “We recognize that measurement in the space is a work in progress, but as gaming continues to scale, we need to see the implementation of rigorous third-party measurement.”

In March, in-game advertising firm Anzu announced a collaboration with Oracle Moat to provide viewability measurement for in-game ads across its inventory, describing it as “first-to-market.” To measure the viewability of its in-game ads, which often take the form of billboards or signs within game environments, Anzu uses games’ built-in ray tracing features, sending out waves of rays from the player’s point-of-view to determine how long ads remain in sight, the percentage of the ads viewable and other important metrics. “Almost every game has a physics library, and this physics library includes ray tracing,” said Anzu chief product officer Ben Fenster.

The announcement turned some heads when Anzu CEO Itamar Benedy told The Drum that the company’s measurement offerings followed “existing IAB and MRC standards,” as the current standards were authored in 2009 and explicitly deprecated in a memo the MRC released last year. Fenster defended the claim by pointing out that Anzu has been heavily involved …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron