Several gaming companies constantly work on various technical developments to bring the metaverse to life. However, the question remains: how close are we to experiencing the metaverse, and why are gaming companies a key part of the metaverse?

Key Points

• The metaverse does not exist in the gaming industry yet, but several companies such as Roblox, Fortnite, Runescape, and Minecraft are working on building the foundations of the metaverse.
• The key element required for the metaverse to exist is interoperability. 
• Interoperability refers to allowing users to move through different virtual words seamlessly. 
• The economy of the metaverse will heavily rely on NFTs and other digital assets.
• It is predicted that the NFT industry’s revenue will have reached $3.5 billion by 2023 and will continue to grow at a compounded annual rate of 22.82% until 2027.
• Technologies that empower the gaming metaverse include: blockchain, cryptocurrency, AR & VR, artificial intelligence, 3D reconstruction, IoT, edge computing & 5G. 
• Many companies are interested in investing in the metaverse for gaming and utilizing advanced technologies like AR, IoT, AI, and blockchain.
• The metaverse has the potential to transform the gaming industry by creating new opportunities for social interaction, revenue generation, and personalized gaming experiences.

The Evolution of Gaming

Prior to the emergence of blockchain-powered games, multiplayer games were already popular among players. However, blockchain has significantly transformed the way online games are played. 

It has introduced capabilities to tokenize in-game items and sell them for cryptocurrency, which has amazed gamers with its potential use cases of NFTs and cryptocurrencies. 

Players can either sell their assets or hold onto them until they receive rewards for achievements scored in the game. 

Gamers interested in gaining real money and cryptocurrency have been particularly impressed with the success of NFT games worldwide. 

The games have gained popularity, not just because of the financial returns, but also due to the realistic portrayal of actual objects and their stunning aesthetics.

The development of metaverse games is a result of dozens of years of technological advancements in the gaming industry. 

The next level of gaming provokes companies to prioritize decentralized projects as the future seems to be moving forward with the decentralization approach, with players accessing Web3-based games.

Is the Metaverse Present in the Gaming Industry?

So far, the metaverse is a hypothetical vision of the next iteration of the Internet. The idea of the metaverse is to project a single, shared, and immersed 3D virtual space where humans can interact with each other by using virtual reality headsets (VR) and augmented reality (AR) glasses.

Although the metaverse does not exist in the gaming industry yet, there are some video game companies that have already started to develop the foundations of metaverse technology, such as Roblox, Fortnite, Runescape, and Minecraft.

There is an argument that the metaverse already exists in the gaming space in the form of online video games, as they provide an online community where people can interact with one another using their chosen avatars and purchase different items using cryptocurrencies, but in fact, the true metaverse is not here yet. 

There is one more essential element missing: interoperability. 

Interoperability will allow users to move through the different virtual worlds seamlessly. This essentially means empowering users to access the metaverse from any device and from different vendors.

Roblox’s CEO, David Baszucki, says that his company has started to craft the metaverse; however, there is still a lot of work to be done, which requires an extremely high level of innovation.

In fact, the technologies that enable access to virtual worlds, such as VR headsets and AR glasses, are already in use and are evolving quickly. It’s the other key elements of the metaverse, such as sufficient bandwidth and interoperability standards, that may take years to develop, or might never materialize.

Currently, we are seeing various gaming companies developing their individual gaming spaces, but the question is: How can different gaming companies create a metaverse that can be used by all game creators?

It’s likely they would need  some kind of a hub instead of the ones used by game vendors today, like Steam and Origin, that would allow users to have access to various games in the metaverse without the need to register for each game separately.

What Are the Challenges of Gaming in the Metaverse?

There are several challenges associated with the development and implementation of a gaming metaverse, including:

1. Technical issues: Building a fully functioning, interconnected metaverse is a complex and technically challenging task that requires significant expertise in areas such as blockchain technology, AI, and virtual reality.
2. Interoperability: A major challenge is ensuring that different virtual worlds and games can seamlessly interact and share data. It requires developing common protocols and standards that can be used across different platforms.
3. Security and privacy: As the metaverse will involve large amounts of personal data and financial transactions, ensuring robust security and privacy measures will be critical to building user trust.
4. Legal and regulatory issues: Using virtual currencies, NFTs and other digital assets raises a range of legal and regulatory issues, such as consumer protection, taxation, and intellectual property rights.
5. Inclusivity: The metaverse has the potential to exclude certain groups of users, such as those who cannot afford the required hardware or have limited Internet access. Ensuring that the metaverse is accessible and inclusive to all users will be important for its long-term success.

What Is the Potential of Gaming in the Metaverse?

The metaverse has the potential to revolutionize the gaming industry in several ways.
First, it can provide a more immersive and social gaming experience by allowing players to interact in a shared virtual world, creating a sense of community and connection beyond individual games and increasing engagement and loyalty among players.

Second, the metaverse can enable new revenue streams for game developers and publishers. For example, the ability to buy and sell NFTs within the metaverse can create new opportunities for in-game items and virtual real estate. 

Additionally, the play-to-earn model can incentivize players to spend more time and money on games, while creating opportunities to earn real money.

Third, the metaverse can enable greater game interoperability, allowing players to bring their virtual assets and characters from one game to another. As a result, it can create a more seamless and personalized gaming experience that more accurately reflects players’ interests and preferences.

Overall, the metaverse has the potential to transform the gaming industry by creating new opportunities for social interaction, revenue generation, and personalized gaming experiences.

How Can the Metaverse Revolutionize the Gaming Industry?

Gaming in the metaverse, driven by virtual reality (VR) technology, has the potential to revolutionize the gaming industry. The opinion comes not only from gamers but also from a recent survey conducted by Globant, which states that 52% of gamers believe that the metaverse in gaming can be a game-changer for the industry. 

Virtual reality (VR) technology is a key element that is driving gaming in the metaverse. It is currently a popular topic in the gaming industry and has captured the attention of gamers.

The rise of the AR/VR-based in the online gaming industry has led to a significant increase in popularity, paving the way for developing a gaming reality known as Web 3.0. The new gaming reality will enable players to transfer their characters seamlessly from one gaming experience to another.

Plenty of businesses are looking to invest in the metaverse for gaming and utilize new and emerging technologies, such as augmented reality, IoT, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, to power the games and experiences.

What Is the Future of the Gaming Metaverse?

Brands have the potential to offer a better customer experience that goes beyond a single virtual platform. By ensuring a positive and consistent experience across multiple virtual worlds, brands can establish meaningful relationships with customers who are spending increasing amounts of time online.

It also allows brands to engage with a larger audience through shared experiences.
To build a Web3 presence that allows for interoperability, brands should consider the following steps:

1. Define their virtual worlds: Brands should start by defining the virtual worlds that align with their brand values and customers’ interests. It will help them choose the most suitable platforms for their business and target audience.
2. Create a consistent brand experience: Brands should create a consistent brand experience across all virtual worlds they operate in. This can be achieved by using the same branding elements, messaging, and tone of voice.
3. Utilize blockchain technology: Blockchain technology can be used to ensure data interoperability between different virtual worlds. Brands can use blockchain-based solutions to enable their customers to move seamlessly between different virtual worlds without losing their progress or personal data.
4. Partner with other brands: Brands can partner with other brands to create shared experiences that span across different virtual worlds. This can help brands reach new audiences and create more engaging customer experiences.
5. Engage with the community: Brands should engage with the community in each virtual world they operate in. This can be done by creating events, sponsoring content creators, and responding to customer feedback.

By following these steps, brands can build a Web3 presence that allows for interoperability and creates a consistent, positive customer experience across different virtual worlds.

AdTech

What Is In-Game Advertising and How Does It Work?

Mike Sweeney, +1

Jan 13, 2022

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The Future of Advertising and AdTech in the Metaverse

Natalia Figas

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What Technologies Will Empower The Gaming Metaverse?

Natalia Figas

May 23, 2023

The post How Can the Metaverse Revolutionize the Gaming Industry? appeared first on Clearcode.

Although gambling has a rather negative connotation as it can lead to addiction and losing large sums of money, it’s big business.

There are dozens of companies on the market that encourage people to try gambling by offering various betting platforms and online casino games. 

In the past few years, gambling advertising has been growing steadily due to the development of online gambling platforms and the increase of mobile devices available on the market.

Key Points

• Gambling advertising promotes various gambling activities by casinos, lotteries, bookmakers and other entities offering the chance to win a monetary prize or crypto currency.
• Gambling advertising is available across different channels and mediums: video advertising, audio channels, newspapers, print and digital publications, DOOH & OOH, social media, in-app & in games. 
• The goal of gambling ads is to encourage people to try gambling or gamble more.
• The gambling market is expected to grow from $465 billion in 2020 to $674 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 7.7%.
• More than 440 gambling advertisers invested $738 million across digital, print and TV ads in 2022. 
• DraftKings, Flutter Entertainment, and MGM Resorts International were the top gambling advertisers in 2022, spending a combined total of $460 million. 
• Most countries forbid or have certain restrictions around the use of gambling advertising.

What Is Gambling Advertising?

Gambling advertising promotes various gambling activities offered by casinos, lotteries, bookmakers and other entities. These activities offer people the opportunity to place bets in the hopes of winning money, prizes, or, more recently, cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin etc. ). 

Gambling advertising used to be associated only with sporting events, e.g. at stadiums and before or during events shown on TV, but now it is available across various channels, including:

• Video advertising: Television, YouTube, and other video apps
• Audio channels: Radio & podcast advertising
• Newspapers
• Print & digital publications
• Out-of-home (OOH) and digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising
• Social media
• In-app & in-game

The goal of gambling ads is to encourage people to try gambling or gamble more. The gambling ads promote various sportsbooks (aka bookmakers or bookies) such as DraftKings, Caesars, and FanDuel. These companies spend millions of dollars on marketing to get their message in front of a larger audience.

But there are also several different alternatives to sports gambling, including:

• Online casinos and poker games
• Politics betting
• UFC and other combat sports betting
• Virtual sports betting
• eSports betting

The Global Gambling & Gambling Advertising Industries

The global gambling market reached a value of nearly $465 billion in 2020, having increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.1% since 2015. The gambling market is expected to grow from $465 billion in 2020 to $674 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 7.7%. The gambling market is expected to grow from $674 billion in 2025 to $895 billion in 2030 at a CAGR of 5.8%. 

According to MediaRada’s recent insights into Gambling Advertising in 2022, more than 440 gambling advertisers invested $738 million across digital, print and TV ads, which accounts for a 22% year-to-year increase.

According to the American Gaming Association, the official revenue for American gambling companies  (the nation’s casinos and mobile gaming apps) for the first 11 months of 2022 exceeded the record set in 2021, accounting for $53.04 billion.

Global Online Gambling Market (2022 to 2028)

The global online gambling market size reached $79.8 billion in 2022, and is expected to grow steadily at the growth rate of 8.5% during 2023-2028 and reach US$133.9 Billion.

Key Factors Impacting the Recent Growth

The growth of online advertising has been spurred on by the following:

• The smartphone era — improvements in Internet accessibility has impacted the growth of the online gambling market. More people are using mobile devices compared to desktop computers and laptops. In most countries, mobile users account for 80% of all users in the online gambling industry.
• New technologies like blockchain, IoT & virtual reality — technological advancements have helped to maintain transparency and anonymity in case of using cryptocurrencies for deposits and payouts in gambling, and virtual reality provided players with immersive experiences. 
• Online gambling laws — a lot of countries and regions in the last 5 years have loosened  their restrictions regarding gambling by introducing gambling laws that are ethical and safe, rather than continuing to ban gambling. 
• The COVID-19 pandemic — the pandemic has led to an increased demand for online gambling as physical casinos were temporarily closed due to lockdown regulations. 
• The use of various channels — gambling advertising has spread to various digital advertising channels, which has led to the growth of gambling awareness and allowed gambling companies to reach new audiences.

Revenuelab.biz says that Australians spend the most on gambling, with approximately 80% of the population participating in various forms of gambling activities. People on average spend US$1,000 on gambling a year. 

In Australia, gambling is quite common and considered a national problem. It’s a highly regulated industry in Australia, but it’s legal for people over the age of 18 to participate in gambling.

Top Gambling Advertisers in 2022

There are more than 400 gambling companies that invested in gambling advertising in 2022, however, DraftKings, Flutter Entertainment, and MGM Resorts International were the top advertisers. 

The three companies combined spent more than $460 million on advertising.

DraftKings

DraftKings spent 42% on digital advertising (social media, digital display and podcasts). 56% of the budget went to a mix of mobile, native, online video and OTT ad campaigns. 

Most advertisers were rather cautious about spending advertising budgets after an increase during a Super Bowl, but DraftKings has been spending big. 

DraftKings recently added an NFT element to their marketing strategy with a campaign featuring Kevin Hart that allows players to create weekly lineups based on NFTs of players they own.

Flutter Entertainment

Flutter Entertainment invested 95% of its budget on TV and the remaining 5% on display, podcast, social media, online video, OTT and mobile.

MGM

MGM (BetMGM) split its ad dollars between traditional and digital ad formats. The company spent 50% of their budget on digital advertising, 45% on TV and 5% on print. 

The digital budget went on a mix of social media, display, and a mix of OTT (mobile, native, podcasts and online video).

How Do Gambling Companies Advertise Their Products?

Gambling companies use a variety of advertising mediums and channels to get the message across the market and reach their target audience. 

Below are some examples of gambling advertising.

‘It’s Who You Play With’ — William Hill TV ad

DraftKings — OOH Screens ad

A DOOH Ad From MGM Resorts

Gambling Ads in Facebook Feeds

Examples of Gambling Ads on Facebook Reels

Laws and Regulations on Gambling Advertising

Below is an overview of the current gambling and gambling advertising laws and regulations in various parts of the world.

Europe

In Europe, many countries have legalized gambling businesses and advertising but still there are some legal and government restrictions. 

The legislative regulation of gambling advertising in Europe can be divided into:

• Permission of gambling advertising — gambling and gambling advertising are allowed with some restrictions.
• Partial ban on gambling advertising — more stringent legislative requirements and criteria for people to be served with the gambling content. 
• Total ban on gambling advertising — no opportunity to offer gambling activities or advertising.

Partial Ban

Russia and Ukraine are two countries that have a partial ban on gambling advertising that requires ads to be shown between certain times of a day. 

Scandinavia 
In Norway and Sweden, gambling advertising is allowed but restricts targeting ads to minors.

Iceland and Finland also bans advertising aimed at minors, as well as using television and audiovisual services as a medium.

Denmark allows gambling advertising with the condition that the ads don’t invite people to gamble or visit any gambling venue. 


The Baltic Countries
Estonia partially bans gambling ads from containing any invitation to participate in gambling or visit gambling establishments.  

Lithuania bans gambling advertising except for advertising the name, trademark and legal form of the gambling company. However, the advertising restrictions don’t apply to lotteries. 

Other European Countries
Belarus partially bans gambling advertising in TV between day-time hours, in educational institutions, healthcare, cultural, sports facilities, and mass media. 

Poland has a partial ban on advertising with the restrictions set for betting, casinos, and gambling  establishments. Advertising cylindrical games, card games, dice games and gambling machines is banned. 

Germany partially bans gambling advertising on TV and on the Internet, but with one expectation — the authorities can grant permission to the operators of lotteries, sports and horserace betting to advertise on TV and on the Internet. 

But in general, advertising of sports betting before and during live TV broadcasts of sporting events is prohibited. 

The Czech Republic also partially bans advertising, which, in practice, means not offering or promoting gambling activities. 

Slovakia has a partial ban on gambling advertising whereby companies can only advertise gambling activities within 200 meters of the gambling establishment. 

In the Netherlands and Belgium, the partial ban limits gambling advertising between certain hours, i.e. 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Outside of those hours, gambling advertising is allowed. 

The UK has a liberal approach, as gambling advertising is legal and even allowed on TV since the introduction of the new Gambling Act in 2007. The only restriction concerns minors, as they should not be targeted by gambling ads.

In Ireland, gambling advertising is partially prohibited, which means that if lottery ads are published or posted, they are subject to be banned. There is also no specialized legislation so the gambling topic is governed by general regulations of consumer protection.

Total ban

Moldova completely bans gambling advertising.

Latvia has a general ban on gambling ads. It applies to advertising outside gambling establishments and is restricted to the advertising on the Internet. However, the country allows 13 licensed operators to offer gaming to players within the country.

The US

Gambling is legal under US federal law, but there are some significant restrictions in various states regarding different types of gambling, as each state is free to regulate or prohibit gambling and gambling advertising within its borders. 

For instance, DraftKings and FanDuel can advertise in New York state, as they are perceived as fantasy leagues which are not considered to be gambling, but rather a game of skill. 

There are some general advertising rules that gambling companies in the US must follow:

• Advertising can not be targeted at minors and audiences under the age of 21 in sports wagering, gaming or related activities. 
• Ads should not include people listed as “sports pool participants” e.g. players, coaches, trainers, league employees or a person who holds a position of authority.
• Ads shall not be false, deceptive or misleading.
• Each ad must clearly state a problem-gambling hotline number.

However, there is one state in the US that allows casinos to advertise — Nevada. 

Nevertheless, all advertising activities must be conducted in a manner that does not bring the gaming industry in Nevada into disrepute. This means casinos shall conduct their advertising and public-relation operations in accordance with dignity, good taste and inoffensiveness.

Asia and Oceania

Thailand
In Thailand, gambling is regulated by the gambling act that divides gambling into three categories:

1. Prohibits gambling.
2. Regulates lucky draws.
3. Covers types of gambling in which public participation is allowed along with advertising or promoting.

Japan 
In Japan, the main forms of gambling are prohibited, but there is one exception which allows gambling activities regarding the land-based betting on horse races, bicycle races, motorcycle races and motorboat races. 

Gambling advertising in Japan is prohibited except for passenger terminal facilities in airports and ports. 

China
Gambling is illegal in China along with gambling advertising. But the approach of authorities to online gambling is changing, so in the future there is a chance that some laws will be adjusted. 


Australia 
In Australia, ads for betting products are not permitted during TV programs classified G or lower from 6am to 8.30am and from 4pm to 7pm, or in programs directed at children between 5am and 8.30 pm.

AdTech

7 Great Examples of In-Game Advertising

Natalia Figas

Jan 17, 2022

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Intrinsic In-Game (IIG) Advertising Measurement Standards: What They Mean for In-Game Advertising

Mike Sweeney

Feb 01, 2023

AdTech

What Are The Benefits of In-Game Advertising?

Paulina Zawiślak, +1

Mar 03, 2023

The post What Is Gambling Advertising? appeared first on Clearcode.

Companies that are starting to invest in in-game advertising are seeing a lot of benefits and innovative ways of reaching their target audience without disrupting the user experience.

Even though it is said that the in-game advertising industry is still in its infancy with several challenges ahead, there are many established and emerging companies that proudly represent the in-game advertising industry and its opportunities. 

This article discusses the challenges and opportunities of in-game advertising and draws attention to technical limitations that, once taken care of, will present several businesses with new opportunities.

Key Points

• The global gaming market is predicted to reach US$286.8 billion annually in 2025. 
• Companies are planning on increasing their ad spend on in-game advertising.
• The gaming industry needs to reevaluate its approach to in-game advertising and respect users and their gaming experiences.
• AdTech platforms allow companies to serve ads in the gaming environment that are precisely adjusted to the user’s interests. 
• In-game advertising provides brands with new advertising opportunities, such as advertising in VR environments. 
• For the ads to be shown inside the video game environment, game developers need to build an SDK that will pass information from the game to an AdTech platform.

The Global Market Value of the Gaming Industry

According to Statista, the global gaming market is expected to grow by 53% from $155 billion in 2020 to $268 billion in 2025.

Challenges of In-Game Advertising

Respecting the User Experience

As companies plan on increasing their ad spend on in-game advertising, the industry should rethink its approach to in-game advertising and keep in mind that respecting the user experience and gaming quality will have a huge impact on the medium’s future. 

Gaming companies should focus on incorporating advertising that improves the user experience instead of disrupting it with ads that simply bother gamers. If the game space is cluttered with ads that spoil the gaming experience, then gaming companies may see a backlash from their users.

According to the marketing rule of seven, it is said that an average person needs to see a brand, product, or service seven times before they make a decision to purchase it. Including products or services in a game to build brand awareness might have a positive impact, as long as the ads don’t interrupt the gaming experience.

The Right Choice of Platforms

Programmatic ad platforms allow companies to serve ads to enormous amounts of digital consumers. AdTech platforms make it possible for advertisers to serve users with a range of ads in different formats depending on the in-game environment, while also providing measurement data thanks to industry standards, such as the IAB Tech Lab’s Intrinsic In-Game (IIG) Measurement Guidelines. 

The ad-serving process may disrupt the user experience, especially if the ads take too long to load, which is common with desktop and in-app mobile advertising. With in-game advertising, the ad-serving process will be slightly different depending on the ad format as most in-game ads, e.g. billboard ads in a game, need to be connected to AdTech platforms via an SDK.

The challenge for game developers is that they don’t know a lot about AdTech and the whole process of ad-serving, as well as media-buying and measurement mechanisms. Therefore, they may face challenges with choosing the right AdTech platform that will provide a seamless ad-serving process in the in-game environment without disrupting their user experience. 

Programmatic advertising platforms allow:

• Game developers to monetize their audiences and create new revenue streams.
• Advertisers to promote their products and services to specific groups of users. 
• Game developers and advertisers to provide a positive ad experience by displaying native ads that don’t disrupt the user experience.
• Game developers and advertisers to measure the performance of ad campaigns.

The right choice of AdTech platforms is not only important to serve the right ad format for a given in-game environment, but it’s also key in the verification and attribution process, as well as for the measurement and analysis of a player’s interaction with the ads.

VR/AR Limitations

While there have been many advancements in the quality of virtual reality (VR) over the past few years, VR developers are still working on creating flawless virtual experiences that mimic the real world by removing lag and increasing the number of frames per second. 

Below are some other challenges with VR/AR technology:

• There are some discrepancies between the virtual world and the real world experienced by the body that can cause VR sickness and feeling nauseous.
• The field of vision is much narrower than a human natural vision and enlarging it could result in user fatigue and headaches. 
• There is a safety concern regarding users using VR technology and the risk of bumping into real objects, falling, and hurting themselves.

Even though there are multiple obstacles regarding VR/AR, in-game environments provide brands with new advertising opportunities, as every billboard, bus stop, and wall can become an interactive place for integrating advertising into the gameplay. 

Displaying personalized ads based on information known about the user inside games allows brands to reach their targeted audiences in new ways. 

Similarly to in-game advertising, displaying ads in a VR environment can also be challenging. 

The dimensions of each space in the game where an ad can be shown can differ, which makes it difficult to display ads properly in both in-game and VR environments. 

Users expect a seamless experience while playing a game which is another challenge that gaming companies and developers need to solve.

Gaming Audiences

Satisfying gamers and providing them with a seamless gaming experience is undoubtedly a challenge. The gaming world is a completely different medium that requires distinct rules and approaches, especially if we compare gaming audiences to audiences from other channels, e.g. websites. 

All Internet users have had a chance to see and interact with an ad online, but in-game advertising is a fairly new area for game developers, brands and gamers. This provides an opportunity for game developers and advertisers to create and maintain new experiences that are different from the ones they know when using a website. 

All Internet users are used to seeing ads online, which has led to banner blindness. However, in-game advertising presents an opportunity for advertisers to contribute to the environment rather than disrupt it, as the approach to serving and displaying ads is completely different.

In this case, the quality of showing ads to the user is much more important than the number of ads. Therefore, brands also have a chance to create new and positive experiences for gaming audiences. 

Gaming audiences have been monetized for over 40 years, but the approach of targeting users inside games has been changing together with the constant development of technology. 

Nowadays, users are served with ads that are based on their interests and information known about them. The targeting is much more precise than it was decades ago, which brings added value for gaming audiences and brands.

From the technical side, gaming companies are facing the challenge of connecting their gaming environments with the advertising technology ecosystem to provide the type of immersive user experience that their users expect. 

When the process lacks proper advertising technology and is not properly integrated into the game, then in-game ads can disrupt the gaming experience and break the illusion of a digital world. The gamer immersed in a game that encounters broken, mismatched or poorly executed ads may develop negative sentiment towards a gaming brand. 

However, when the process of serving and delivering ads is done flawlessly, advertising within games provides contextual-relevant ads and effective messaging that actually add to the gaming audience’s entire experience.

Delivering a Realistic Advertising Experience

In most digital advertising channels, ads are served in static ad spaces with defined dimensions, e.g. 300 x 250 pixels, while the in-game environment can consist of static and dynamic ads that change shape as the player progresses through the game. Because of these factors, serving and displaying ads in the gaming environment poses a constant and complex technical challenge. 

The main technical challenges of in-game ads are:

• Displaying ads that are relevant to the game and are viewable by gamers.
• Displaying ad dimensions.
• Adjusting the ads to the changing virtual environment (e.g. weather conditions).

Continuing on from that last point, another challenge in making ads match the gaming environment is adapting them to what’s happening at a given point in time during gameplay. 

For instance, if it is raining while the player is driving a racing car, then the banner seen at the end of the finish line should be muddy, blowing in the wind, and spattered with raindrops. 

This is key to delivering the ultimate experience, as gaming audiences care deeply about the realism of the gaming experience and the level of technical details delivered during the game.

Gaming and Advertising Tech Integrations

The key to providing users with a seamless and undisruptive experience is engaging a development team with a software development kit (SDK) that was built with in the assistance of game development and AdTech experience and domain knowledge.

This is extremely important because without a properly integrated ad platform into the gaming space, the game engine will not be able to react in real time as the gaming environment changes dynamically during the game. 

For the SDK to perform flawlessly, consulting with AdTech experts is definitely necessary to provide players with a gaming environment that does not slow down performance or disrupt the gaming experience. 

Advertising inside games is much different from advertising on websites; therefore, it requires a distinct approach. 

For ads to be shown inside the video game e.g. on a billboard or a bus, the game developers need to build an SDK that will take the information about the ad and pass it to the AdTech platform. The AdTech platform then needs to analyze the data contained in the ad request, match it with an advertiser’s campaign, select an ad, and return it to the game via the SDK.

The seamless execution of delivering ads is only possible provided the integration between the SDK and the AdTech platform is set up correctly. From the technical side, it frequently requires working with an AdTech development team that understands the inner workings of the technical processes, including ad serving and media buying.

In-Game Ad Fraud

Fraudulent activity in games is a serious threat and challenge for both gaming and AdTech companies.

The estimated cost of digital ad fraud in 2022 cost companies around US$80 billion dollars. The number of bad actors is growing, and companies are said to lose even more in 2023, reaching US$100 billion dollars.

While the percentage of ad fraud in games is much lower than in other channels, ad fraudsters are known to follow the money. This means that when brands start pouring more of their advertising budgets into in-game advertising, losses will likely increase due to ad fraud.

On June 14, 2022, the IAB released an updated version of its Intrinsic In-Game Advertising Measurement Guidelines 2.0 that outlines all the ad fraud types, models, risks and incentives specific to the in-game environment. 

The IAB urges advertisers to detect and exclude the following types of invalid and fraudulent traffic:

• General Invalid Traffic or Invalid Traffic (GIVT or IVT) — appears in different forms and can refer to bots, crawlers, spiders, or any other type of non-human traffic. GIVT can also be applied to activity-based filtration or browsers that pre-render pages. This type of invalid traffic can be easily identified and excluded from the results.
• Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT) — comprises more difficult traffic to detect, including advanced bots that closely mimic human traffic, hijacked devices, malware, invalid proxy traffic, and cookie manipulation techniques like cookie stuffing.

Opportunities

Various Ad Formats

The advantage of in-game advertising is that it offers a variety of advertising options for brands to reach their target audience and drive engagement. Although many developers and publishers usually look into exploring in-game billboards and advertising boards in sporting stadiums, they represent only a fraction of the types of ad formats that can be used. 

There are three main ad formats for in-game advertising:

• Statistic in-game ads — usually stationary elements hardcoded into the game that cannot be changed, e.g. billboards, posters, and banners. 
• Dynamic ads — require an Internet connection and can change upon a player’s game progress, are flexible, and can be updated in real-time and based on a user’s location. 
• Gamevertising — offers brands the opportunity to build an entire game specifically for the promotion of their products or services.

Each in-game advertising format provides several different options to help companies build and maintain brand awareness without disrupting the user experience.

Diverse Audiences

Many may think that the gaming audience consists mainly of young people, however, the Deloitte media survey conducted in 2022 reports that gamers are spread across generations. In fact, on average, Gen Z and Millennials spend 11 hours per week playing video games. 

From the five countries that took part in the survey — the United States, The United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, and Japan — the Gen Z respondents said that playing video games is their favorite leisure activity. 

Although Gen Z and Millenials are not the only generations that actively play video games, in the U.S., 89% of people from Gen X  and more than 50% of Boomers surveyed stated that they play video games.

The numbers above mean that brands may be underestimating the in-game advertising opportunities and they should definitely rethink where they plan to allocate their marketing budgets in the future.

Brand Awareness, Engagement and Conversions

In-game advertising provides brands with the opportunity to test unique ad formats that are exclusive to the game environment thanks to the AdTech technology. 

Moreover, brands have the chance to reach new audiences through emerging technologies while respecting users, as 69% of gamers are open to non-disruptive in-game ads according to the recent Integral Ad Science research. 

The capabilities of integrating gaming environments with AdTech technology results in a seamless and real-time gaming experience which is a perfect fit for demanding game audiences. 

Although most digital advertisements are often viewed as a nuisance by most Internet users, it seems like there is one environment where a lot of people don’t mind seeing ads provided they match the context of the game. 

Gamers feel favorably about in-game ads that are contextually relevant to the surrounding content, in fact, 61% of gamers would prefer to see ads related to the content of the game they are playing. 

The other positive thing is that 57% gamers say that they are likely to purchase from a brand whose ads are relevant to the content of the game they are playing. 

Brands knowing the numbers should definitely consider testing in-game ads and make sure the content of the ad is suitable to the gaming environment to increase the chances of a positive outcome.

Different Verticals and Industries

In the gaming market, there are hundreds of games that brands can advertise to build brand awareness and promote certain products or services. 

A report published in May 2022 on the in-game advertising market by Research Dive found that potential customers of in-game advertising represent the following industries:

• Automotive
• Healthcare 
• Media & entertainment
• Banking, financial services and insurance
• Education
• Retail & consumer goods
• Transport & tourist
• IT & Telecom.

Companies and brands that operate within these industries have a lot to gain by investing in in-game advertising as it’ll allow them to reach their target audience and grow brand awareness.

Conclusion

The main advantage of in-game advertising is that it offers a variety of advertising options to reach a target audience and drive engagement without interrupting the experience or annoying the user who is enjoying the game. 

As the gaming audience is one of the most demanding audiences, gaming companies have a lot of challenges to solve to satisfy their users.

 Here is a checklist to follow:

• User experience — build and further develop games in a manner that does not impact the gaming experience. 
• AdTech platforms — choose the AdTech platforms that allow for a seamless integration with the gaming environment or consider building your own AdTech platform. 
• VR/AR space — keep investing in the VR/AR environment to stand out from the competition and provide a unique experience.
• Gaming experience — have access to advertising technology that is properly integrated into the game to avoid disrupting the gaming experience and breaking the illusion of a gaming world. 
• Gaming and advertising tech integrations — reach out to an AdTech development team that will help to build an SDK to connect to the AdTech infrastructure to run key programmatic advertising processes, such as ad targeting and measurement. 
• Game ad fraud — detect and exclude invalid and fraudulent traffic from gaming environments.

AdTech

What Is In-Game Advertising and How Does It Work?

Mike Sweeney, +1

Jan 13, 2022

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7 Great Examples of In-Game Advertising

Natalia Figas

Jan 17, 2022

AdTech

Top Companies in the In-Game Advertising Industry

Paulina Zawiślak, +1

Oct 19, 2022

The post What Are the Challenges and Opportunities of In-Game Advertising? appeared first on Clearcode.

Advertisers have been seeking new and innovative ways to reach their target audiences without disrupting the user experience, and in-game advertising is proving to be a successful channel. 

Blending and integrating ad content into the games allows for a non-interruptive and seamless gaming experience which can leave users with a positive and long-lasting impression of brands. 

Why Should Companies Consider In-Game Advertising? 

Investing in in-game advertising allows brands to: 

1. Reach diverse audiences — in-game advertising gives brands the opportunity to get their message in front of diversified and specific audiences.
2. Build brand awareness — using different mediums means getting a brand message in front of audiences across various channels.
3. Differentiate from the competition — leveraging another channel allows brands to be present where their competitors aren’t.
4. Engage with audiences — playing a game requires being focused and analyzing each element of the game. Therefore, seeing an ad blended into the game means that users are more likely to remember it.
5. Precise data — having access to specific user data allows brands to align the message to the gamer and their interests.
6. Explore different ad formats — integrating different ad formats into a game can help reduce ad fatigue and, more importantly, deliver a non-intrusive gaming experience.

What Are the Benefits of In-Game Advertising? 

The in-game advertising industry undoubtedly has huge potential. According to research from Admix, media buyers will maintain and increase their in-game advertising spend over the next year. Moreover, 93% of media buyers intend to run in-game advertising campaigns by 2025. 

There are several benefits of blending branded content into in-game environments for both users and brands.  

Benefits for users: Game developers can provide users with an undisrupted gaming experience by showing native, in-game ads, e.g., on virtual billboards, rather than by showing intrusive and annoying ads similar to those found in display web advertising. 

Benefits for brands: The main advantage of in-game advertising is that advertisers can increase brand awareness and engagement by showing ads to users in a natural and organic way without disrupting the gaming experience.

A study by Broadband provider TalkTalk found that in-game advertising resulted in:

• An increase in purchase intent — there was a 12% uplift in sales after users were exposed to in-game ads.
• Longer attention span— the average gamer’s attention equated to 29 minutes, which is a remarkable result compared to online advertising (web display and mobile display) of 17.5 minutes per thousand impressions.
• Higher dwell time — users’ average dwell time was 13% higher for the in-game ads than the industry average of 1.6 for online advertising.
• Greater interest — in-game ads were viewed by up to 96% of participants of the study and over eight in ten (84%) felt that the ads were suitable for the in-game environment.

How Has the Pandemic Accelerated the Growth of the Gaming Industry? 

The COVID pandemic and lockdowns escalated the growth of the gaming industry as people were not allowed to meet in person because of the restrictions. 

According to Nielsen research, 82% of global consumers played video games and watched video content during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. 

People were looking for ways to both entertain themselves and maintain their social connections and stay in touch with friends.

The gaming industry is forecasted to maintain its recent rapid growth, with a PwC report predicting that it could be worth $321 billion by 2026. 

What Are the Different Formats of In-Game Ads (IGA)? 

Most examples of IGA are found inside mobile games for iOS and Android, but they can also appear in games played on computers and game consoles such as Xbox and PlayStation.

There are three main forms of in-game advertisements: static in-game ads, dynamic ads, and gamevertising.

Statics Ads

Static ads are typically hardcoded in the game and represent stationary elements such as virtual billboards, posters, and banners. Once implemented into the game, they cannot be changed later. 

Dynamic Ads

Dynamic ads require active Internet connections so the ads can change as the player progresses through the game. Dynamic in-game advertisements provide advertisers with a great deal of flexibility, are easy to scale, and can be used to geo-target opted-in users.  

In contrast to static ads, dynamic ads are displayed in a game and can be updated in real-time.

There are a number of different dynamic ad formats that advertisers can use:

• Interstitial ads are rich interactive ads that cover the entire screen during natural pauses in the game, such as breaks between levels.
• Native banners are similar to web banner ads, but they blend seamlessly into the background or banners inside a game to provide an unobtrusive ad experience.
• Contextual adsare delivered based on the user’s state at the time of serving the ad. Advertisers share a list of topics and keywords, which are later used by the algorithm to match the content, keywords, topics, and images.
• Rewarded ads reward users if they watch a full-screen ad for 15-30 seconds. They are often given in-game currency, extra playing time, more levels, etc.
• Playable ads are interactive video ads that can be played to users to preview the gaming app before users decide to download it.

Gamevertising

Gamevertising represents building an entire game specifically for the promotion of a company, product, or service as a part of the game. Elements of gamevertising are embedded throughout the game, pointing to the singular brand that the game aims to promote. 

The Use of Zero-Party Data and First-Party Data in In-Game Advertising

Any information game developers and marketers can collect directly from their gaming audience is classed as both zero-party and first-party data. 

In many cases, the gaming experience starts even before the user initiates their first gameplay.

The process begins with setting up the account logging in to the game. It’s at this point when users are asked to share their:

• Preferences regarding the content that is going to be displayed during the game.
• Willingness to receive game tips and tricks in the game.
• Willingness to receive discount codes/coupons to partner companies. 

Companies ask for this information to improve the user experience and use it at the appropriate moment in the game, e.g., when the user is stuck at some level or lacks the knowledge of how to overcome the difficulties. This data can also be used to determine what message should be shown on an interactive banner.

This type of information is known as zero-party data as it contains information relating to a user’s preferences.

On the other hand, first-party data is information that users share with the gaming company when creating an account and playing the game.

Examples of first-party data include:

• Email addresses
• Age
• IP address & geolocation
• Purchase history of ad-ons and items in the game.

Access to this enormous amount of first-party data and zero party-data provides gaming companies with a huge opportunity to build their own technology to better analyze, categorize and understand the various data segments, as well as manage and monetize their data. 

Gaming is a different channel as it is interactive and live. Because it is so different from traditional advertising, it gives brands a huge advantage in creating campaigns that people might be motivated to engage with.

A user’s perception of in-game ads is entirely different from traditional banner ads on websites and in-game ads have a much less negative connotation.

AdTech

What Is In-Game Advertising and How Does It Work?

Mike Sweeney, +1

Jan 13, 2022

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Top Companies in the In-Game Advertising Industry

Paulina Zawiślak, +1

Oct 19, 2022

AdTech

Intrinsic In-Game (IIG) Advertising Measurement Standards: What They Mean for In-Game Advertising

Mike Sweeney

Feb 01, 2023

The post What Are The Benefits of In-Game Advertising? appeared first on Clearcode.

Key Points

• Web cookies are a storage mechanism in web browsers that are used to store data.
• There are generally two types of cookies: first-party and third-party cookies.
• First-party cookies are created by the domain (aka website) the user is currently visiting.
• Third-party cookies are created by domains other than the one the user is visiting.
• Third-party cookies are also referred to as tracking cookies, tracking codes, tracking pixels and the like.
• They are mainly used for cross-site identification, which can then power programmatic advertising processes like audience targeting, retargeting, frequency capping, and measurement.
• The main reason for the decline of third-party cookies in the web browsers is the changing privacy landscape in programmatic advertising.
• Third-party cookies are blocked by default in Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox, but are still available in Google Chrome. Ad blockers also prevent third-party cookies from being saved to a user’s device.
• Other alternatives to third-party cookies include universal IDs and device graphs, data clean rooms, the IAB Tech Lab’s Seller Defined Audiences (SDA), self-serve ad platforms, and contextual targeting.

What Are Third-Party Cookies?

Web cookies are a storage mechanism in web browsers that are used to store data. There are generally two types of cookies: first-party and third-party cookies. Both types of cookies are the same from a technical perspective with the only real difference being who created them. First-party cookies are created by the domain (aka website) the user is currently visiting. Third-party cookies are created by domains other than the one the user is visiting. 

Third-party cookies are also referred to as tracking cookies, tracking codes, tracking pixels and the like. They are mainly used for cross-site identification, which can then power programmatic advertising processes like audience targeting, retargeting, frequency capping, and measurement. 

Third-party cookies not only track users across sites to provide a bigger picture of their behavior, but they also allow website owners to provide certain services, such as live chats. 

When a user visits a website, a first-party cookie is created on that domain (somewebsite.com), but in addition, a third-party cookie is often created by another domain (e.g. ad.doubleclick.net).

The latter is a third-party cookie because the URL (ad.doubleclick.net) doesn’t match the host domain (somewebsite.com). The cookie is created on somewebsite.com by a third-party provider (ad.doubleclick.net), hence the name “third-party cookie”. 

How Are Third-Party Cookies Created?

For a cookie to be created, a request needs to be sent from the web page to a server. The file being requested is different depending on the use, but it can be an actual creative (an ad) or a tracking pixel, which is completely invisible to the user but acts as a tracker in situations when there is no click event — for instance, when the ad was viewed by not clicked on.

For example, if the third party was an advertising service like Google Ads, the request would be for a creative – the actual ad the visitor sees. The Google ad markup can allow a third-party cookie to be placed. 

Here’s what the ad markup could look like:

When the web page loads, the above ad markup would also load and a request would be sent off to ad.doubleclick.net/the-extension-to-the-creative to retrieve the image and assign a cookie to the user at the same time.

Different third parties may request different files from their web servers and send them back to the browser.

So essentially, in order to create a cookie — whether that be a first-party or third-party cookie — the website simply needs to send a request to a server.

The server will then respond to that request and create a cookie, provided the privacy settings in the web browser allow it.

Why Are Third-Party Cookies Being Phased Out?

The main reason for the decline of third-party cookies in the web browsers is the changing privacy landscape in programmatic advertising. Cookies aren’t inherently bad, and most websites use them to ensure a seamless experience for returning visitors. 

Still, the process of identifying and tracking individuals across the web using third-party cookie tracking is unambiguous, and regulators and legislators have been trying to tame the problem for the last two decades. 

Governments and web users are demanding more privacy and transparency regarding their choice and control over how their data is being processed and used around the Internet. As a result, many new privacy laws around the world have been introduced to help protect user privacy and secure their data.

Major web browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari have also implemented changes to prevent third-party cookies from being created as a way to increase privacy for their users.

Safari and Firefox Turn off Support for Third-Party Cookies

Over the past few years, both Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari have introduced new features in their web browsers to prevent cross-site tracking. 

Apple’s privacy crusade started in its Safari browser back in 2015 when it allowed iOS users to install content blockers, which blocked certain elements on a web page, such as ads. 

In 2017, they introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) which is a privacy feature that blocks third-party cookies by default and limits the lifespan of certain first-party cookies and other data storage mechanisms. 

In 2019 Firefox also made a step towards protecting user privacy and introduced a feature called Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) that started to block third-party cookies by default. 

In January 2020, Google Chrome announced that it too would be shutting off support for third-party cookies in the next few years. Currently, it’s expected that Google will shut off support for third-party cookies in Chrome in 2024. 

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The European Union’s GDPR came into force in May 2018 with the aim of protecting personal data and increasing user privacy. 

There are 6 legal bases for collecting personal data as outlined in the GDPR.

In the context of programmatic advertising, websites, AdTech companies, data companies and advertisers need to collect consent (Article 6, 1a), typically via a consent management platform (CMP), from users before they’re able to collect their personal data — e.g. create a third-party cookie on their device.

According to research from Reuters Institute, the introduction of the GDPR caused a 22% decrease in third-party cookies being created on news sites, including a 14% drop in advertising and marketing, and a 9% decrease in social media cookies on websites. 

There was also a 7% drop in the number of news sites that host third-party social media content, such as sharing buttons from Facebook and Twitter. 

Although the GDPR’s impact isn’t as direct as ad blockers or privacy settings in web browsers, it has significantly reduced the number of available audiences, especially in Europe.

What Information Can Be Stored in a Cookie?

Users are often unaware that their personal data is being harvested from third-party cookies.

Typically, the type of information that can be collected and stored in a first- and third-party cookie ranges from individual IP addresses, search and browser history, products and websites viewed, and specific details about devices.

This information can also be connected to sensitive information about a person’s health, family, sexuality, political views, religious beliefs and more.

Programmatic processes like real-time bidding (RTB) expose the personal data of billions of users by creating third-party cookies and saving them to the user’s device, often without the user’s knowledge or explicit permission.

The lack of self-regulation in the programmatic advertising industry has not only caused governments from different countries to introduce new privacy laws but also launch antitrust investigations into Google, Amazon Facebook and Apple (GAFA) because of their the dominance in the advertising industry, breach of user privacy, and use of privacy as a competitive advantage. 

Can First- And Third-Party Cookies Still Be Created Even if a User Doesn’t Provide Consent?

In some web browsers, like Firefox and Safari, third-party cookies are blocked by default. But third-party cookies can still be created in Google Chrome.

Even though first- and third-party cookies should only be created when a user agrees to it and shares their consent to be tracked, many reports confirmed that consent management platforms (CMPs) were still firing tags on a user’s device, regardless of whether the user provided consent or rejected it. 

The other thing is that users don’t seem to have a choice in whether a cookie is created or not. According to a study by Ebiquity, the vast majority (92.6%) of websites are tracking at least one user’s device prior to gaining their consent. 

The study analyzed 200,000 cookies and half were defined as ”marketing cookies” by the CMP with 82.4% of these tracking tools determined to have been installed on users’ devices by third parties. A third (32.3%) of the cookies were fired without valid user consent. 

Internet users also suffer from dark patterns in the design of the CMP to increase the chances of users giving consent. It means users aren’t given a clear choice of “yes” or “no” but rather click marathons which are supposed to discourage the user from providing informed consent and encourage them to simply select “yes” instead. 

Third-party cookies can still be created even if a website is using a CMP in the following ways:

1. Some websites still fire tags that create third-party cookies before a user has given consent or even after they have rejected it.
2. Via the use of dark patterns and assumed-consent approaches where a CMP displays a default option “OK” to encourage the user to give consent without taking any other action.
3. By leveraging legitimate interest as the basis for processing personal data — i.e. creating third-party cookies for AdTech companies because the website views advertising as “legitimate interest”.

Third-Party Cookies in Google Chrome

Third-party cookies can still be created in the Google Chrome browser, but the tech giant has set a deadline for phasing them out. 

On Tuesday the 14th of January, 2020, Google Chrome announced it would stop supporting third-party cookies within the next two years. 

Then, on Thursday June 24, 2021, Google Chrome announced it would be expanding the use of third-party cookies by 2 years and shut off support from the middle of 2023.

However, on Wednesday July 27, 2022, as the deadline was approaching, Google announced it will be delaying its shutdown of third-party cookies by another year to the second half of 2024. 

Google is one the most popular browsers that accounts for 65.24% of the browser market and around 80% of the revenue derived from Alphabet, Google’s parent company, comes from advertising.

Therefore, the tech giant has decided to shut off third-party cookies but still leave the gate open for advertising and provide some alternatives that respect user privacy.

Google aims to create a thriving web ecosystem with improved user privacy and maintain an ad-supported web via the standards set by its Privacy Sandbox. 

Third-Party Cookies in Safari & Firefox

Third-party cookies cannot be created in Safari and Firefox as they are blocked by default unless the users unmarks the option in their browser’s settings. 

Ad Blockers

Ad blockers can be compared to gatekeepers that prevent users from downloading and loading unwanted elements on a given website. 

In practice, it means that ad blockers block JavaScript ad tags from AdTech companies from firing, which means that third-party cookies cannot be created. 

The ad blocker prevents a number of key programmatic advertising processes from occurring which, for advertisers and marketers, means no data regarding:

• Identification across the web and AdTech platforms like SSPs and DSPs.
• Behavioral targeting and retargeting to show personalized ads.
• Audience activation via DMPs to create audiences and run the cookie syncing process.
• Frequency capping to limit the number of times the same user is shown the same ad.
• Attribution regarding ad views and conversions.

What Are the Alternatives to Third-Party Cookies?

Below are the main alternatives to third-party cookies in programmatic advertising:

1. Universal IDs and Device Graphs
2. Data Clean Rooms
3. Google Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox
4. The IAB Tech Lab’s Seller Defined Audiences (SDA)
5. Self-Serve Ad Platforms
6. Contextual Targeting

Read more about the alternatives here: Alternatives to Third-Party Cookies and Mobile IDs in AdTech

Data & Privacy

Identity in AdTech: Meet The Various Universal ID Solutions [Updated 2024]

Mike Sweeney, +1

Sep 03, 2019

Data & Privacy

How Google Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox Will Work + Possible Solutions for AdTech

Mike Sweeney

Apr 09, 2020

Data & Privacy

6 Alternatives to Third-Party Cookies and Mobile IDs in AdTech

Mike Sweeney

Jan 23, 2023

The post The Demise of Third-Party Cookies in AdTech: Why Are They Being Phased Out? appeared first on Clearcode.

In the years following, many other telcos entered the AdTech industry by either building their own tech or spending millions, and even billions, of dollars on acquiring existing AdTech businesses.

Some of these ventures have worked out and some haven’t.

In this article we take a closer look at the telcos that have entered AdTech, how they’ve fared, and the options telcos have when wanting to enter AdTech.

A Bumpy Road for Buyers

Verizon, AT&T, Telenor, and Singtel all acquired mature AdTech companies, but each of these ventures ended up with the telcos selling off their AdTech assets. 

The inability to generate notable financial results, improper usage of the AdTech and data assets, and the wrong business strategy are some of the main reasons for these acquisitions not working for telcos.

Here’s an overview of why some telcos couldn’t make their AdTech acquisitions work:

• AT&T’s sale of Xandr shows us that growing a new arm of an existing business is challenging and acquiring an AdTech platform doesn’t always deliver a positive ROI. Also, Xandr’s goal was to compete with Google and Facebook, which proved harder to achieve than first thought.
• Telenor’s sale of Tapad reveals that telcos struggle with technical problems, such as integrating the tech with existing operations and proper use of the assets. 
• Verizon’s sale of Yahoo! and AOL also pointed out the challenges in competing with Google and Facebook.

The lack of specialization in AdTech doesn’t help either. 

Integrating an existing and mature piece of software into a company’s existing systems is an enormous challenge in itself, which is multiplied when that piece of software is an AdTech platform. 

For most telcos, the goal behind entering AdTech is to monetize their customer data and open up their inventory to brands and ad agencies. Simply acquiring an AdTech platform won’t achieve that — there are many integrations that you’ll need to set up to connect all the systems together. A lack of AdTech knowledge and know-how will make this process even more difficult.

And finally, all of these cases show that acquiring an existing AdTech doesn’t always produce the results they expected, leading to the false conclusion that digital advertising can’t represent a new arm of a telecommunications business.

“While acquiring an existing AdTech business may seem like the obvious choice for telcos, as we’ve seen, it often ends up becoming a very expensive failure. There are other ways telcos can enter AdTech and build successful businesses, such as developing the software. This not only allows telcos to build software that meets their business goals and properly integrates with their existing systems, but also enables them to receive a working platform without a huge price tag attached to it”, says Piotr Banaszczyk, CEO at Clearcode.

The Telcos That Entered AdTech and Succeeded

While many telcos have failed to make their AdTech businesses work, there are companies that have succeeded, such as Alticel, Ericsson and T-Mobile.

In 2019 T-Mobile bought PushSpring, an AdTech company specializing in mobile ads and push notifications. 

In January 2022 the telco also acquired Octopus Interactive, a rideshare-focused advertising startup. The company announced that it is committed to AdTech and plans to become a multibillion dollar player in the industry.

The key to their strategy was to acquire relatively small AdTech companies operating in niche markets instead of acquiring a huge AdTech player.

If T-Mobile has made their AdTech acquisitions work, then maybe the key to succeeding in AdTech is to start small and grow incrementally. 

But acquiring AdTech companies isn’t the only way to achieve this — telcos also have the option of building the tech, which in many cases may prove more advantageous.

Advantages of Building AdTech Platforms for Telcos

When building their own AdTech platform, telcos have the most to gain as it allows them to develop software that can be customized to their technical requirements and well-aligned with their business goals. 

The main advantages of building an AdTech platform for telcos are:

• Ownership of the tech, IP and data.
• Control over the product roadmap.
• Full customizability of the tech.
• Less risk of the project failing in comparison to acquiring an AdTech platform.
• Better and easier integration with existing systems.

The main disadvantage of building an AdTech platform is that it will take anywhere from 6 to 12 months to build the minimum viable product (MVP). 

Also, it will cost much more to build an AdTech platform than to rent one, but will be less expensive than acquiring an existing AdTech company. 

Below is a simple comparison of the pros and cons of acquiring, renting and building an AdTech platform.

How Telcos Can Ensure Success in AdTech via Custom Development

As the stories above have highlighted, acquiring an existing and huge AdTech company hasn’t translated into success for many telcos. 

T-Mobile seems to have proven that AdTech acquisitions can work with its purchase of AdTech startups in niche markets.

However, even acquiring a small AdTech company can present challenges around technical incompatibility and system integration issues.

Telecommunications companies that want to succeed should take a closer look at the option of building a custom AdTech solution.

But even software development projects can be seen as a risky venture.

So how can telcos ensure they succeed in not only building a viable AdTech business but also building a working AdTech platform?

One of the keys to building and launching a working AdTech platform is to build it with software engineers familiar with the programmatic advertising landscape and experience in developing AdTech platforms. 

For most telcos, understanding the AdTech ecosystem from a business perspective is a challenge, but understanding the AdTech ecosystem from a technical perspective is even more challenging. 

If a software engineer doesn’t know what a demand-side platform (DSP) is, then how are they expected to build one that works?

Ultimately, the success of an AdTech development project depends on the engineers’ knowledge of the AdTech ecosystem and how the various platforms work and integrate with each other.

The Pros and Cons of Acquiring and Renting AdTech Platforms For Telcos

The Pros of Acquiring AdTech Platforms for Telcos

By acquiring an AdTech platform, telcos get instant access to a ready-to-use product and a new revenue stream. 

In addition, they can extend the capabilities of the platform by building new features, setting up new integrations, and connecting it to other parts of their business. 

The ownership of the solution gives them full control over the product’s roadmap and allows them to make some customizations. Telcos also have a product that is integrated with other AdTech and MarTech platforms, giving them access to various demand (advertisers) and supply (publishers) sources. 

The main benefits of acquiring an AdTech platform are:

• Instant access and ownership of a working platform.
• Access to a large existing customer base.
• Working integrations with other AdTech and MarTech platforms.

The Cons of Acquiring AdTech Platforms for Telcos

One disadvantage of acquiring an AdTech platform is that the telco is limited with the technologies that power the AdTech platform. The telco could really only use the tech stack, e.g. programming languages, cloud computing service etc., that the AdTech platform was built with. This can not only create issues around maintaining and expand the platform but also limit the integration possibilities with the telco’s internal systems.

Also, the telco needs to invest a lot of money in the acquisition and there is no guarantee that the investment will result in a positive ROI. 

One of the biggest challenges with acquiring an existing AdTech platform is integrating the telco’s system with the platform’s as they are two separate worlds.

The main disadvantages of acquiring an AdTech platform are:

• It requires a large amount of money upfront.
• Seeing a positive ROI can take many years, if at all.
• It can be hard to integrate it with your internal systems and tools.
• You’ll likely need to retain the software engineers who are familiar with the software.

The Pros of Renting AdTech Platforms for Telcos

Renting an AdTech platform gives telcos instant access to a working product out of the box without having to spend millions or billions of dollars on acquiring the tech. 

Ongoing software maintenance and product development is handled by the AdTech vendor, allowing the telco to focus on utilizing the platform to achieve their business goals. 

The main advantages of renting an AdTech platform are:

• The ability to use the platform straightaway.
• No responsibility for the product roadmap.
• You can transfer to another vendor whenever you want.

The Cons of Renting AdTech Platforms for Telcos

Out of all the options available to telcos — acquiring, renting or building — renting an AdTech platform offers the least amount of business advantages and is likely to be the least profitable option as well. 

When renting an AdTech platform, telcos don’t own the platform, which means they are dependent on the AdTech company they signed the agreement with for maintaining the platform and can rarely influence the product roadmap. 

The telco also is paying fees and commissions to a third-party, which can add up to millions of dollars depending on the amount of money they spend on advertising campaigns.

From a legal point of view, it’s much harder to comply with the various privacy laws and internal data security policies if a telco rents an AdTech platform, compared to acquiring or building its own. 

Telcos that rent AdTech platforms won’t be able to use their own first-party data for ad targeting and measurement, which is growing in popularity because of the changing privacy landscape, because of their strict internal and external legal policies around using and sharing customer data.

The main disadvantages of renting an AdTech platform are:

• Depending on the amount of media spend, renting a third-party AdTech platform might mean paying millions of dollars in fees and commissions a year to the vendor. 
• You may not be able to get the most out of the AdTech platform because of restrictions around privacy and security policies, e.g. the use of customer data for ad targeting.
• You are totally dependent on the vendor in terms of new features and system uptime.

Summary

Despite some of the recent exits, telcos still have an opportunity to build an additional source of revenue in the AdTech industry. 

They have the capacity, capital and resources to enter AdTech, but may have taken the wrong path. 

Acquiring large AdTech companies hasn’t resulted in the success that many telcos had planned and using an existing AdTech platform doesn’t provide any business advantages and comes with a number of privacy and data security restrictions. 

To ensure success in AdTech, telcos have a lot to gain by building their own tech, such as ownership of the software, IP and data, as well as full control over the product roadmap and easier integration with existing systems.

AdTech

Opportunities Abound For Telcos To Jump Into Ad Tech

Mike Sweeney

May 17, 2016

AdTech

Should I Build, Rent or Buy an AdTech or MarTech Platform [infographic]

Mike Sweeney, +1

Sep 30, 2019

AdTech

Why Are Telcos Exiting AdTech?

Mike Sweeney

Nov 23, 2022

The post Should Telcos Acquire, Rent or Build AdTech Platforms? appeared first on Clearcode.

But which companies are at the forefront of the in-game advertising industry?

We’ve researched the main companies operating in the in-game advertising industry and listed them below.

Top Companies in the In-Game Advertising Industry

Activision Blizzard

Activision Blizzard offers platforms with the most epic interactive gaming and entertainment experiences to bring people together with purpose and belonging. 

Founded: 2008
Headquarters: Santa Monica, US
Specialties: Video Games, Entertainment, Consumer Products, Media, Film and TV, Gaming, and Production

AdInMo

AdInMo is a dynamic in-game advertising platform that delivers engaged customers for advertisers and quality monetization for developers & publishers. 

Founded: 2017
Headquarters: Edinburgh, Scotland 
Specialties: Mobile Advertising, Mobile Games, Game Advertising, AdTech 

Anzu Virtual Reality Ltd.

Anzu enables developers to monetize their games and advertisers to reach players across mobile, PC, console, and Roblox with non-disruptive ads that are part of the gameplay.

Founded: 2017
Headquarters: Tel-Aviv, Israel
Specialties: 3D App Monetization, 3D Ads, Native Ads, Interactive Ads, Playable Ads, AdTech 

Adverty

Adverty offers true in-game ad inventory at scale and allows content creators to monetize the complete experience with unobtrusive, easy-to-integrate, immersive ads.

Founded: 2017
Headquarters: Stockholm, Sweden
Specialties: Virtual Reality Advertising. Augmented Reality, Mobile Advertising, AdTech 

AppsFlyer

AppFlyer helps maximize your ROI by giving you insight into which in-game ads and purchases bring in the most revenue while protecting your budget with comprehensive fraud protection.

Founded: 2011
Headquarters: San Francisco, US
Specialties: Mobile apps, Mobile advertising 

Azerion

Azerion offers an integrated platform that provides technology solutions to automate the purchase and sale of digital advertising for media buyers and sellers, supported by in-market sales and campaign management teams.


Founded: 2014
Headquarters: Schiphol-Rijk, Netherlands
Specialties: Games Advertising, Social Games, Mobile Games, AdTech 

Bidstack

Bidstack enables game developers to monetize their titles and empowers advertisers to engage gamers, without disrupting their playing experience.


Founded: 2015
Headquarters: London, UK
Specialties: Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, OOH, VOOH, Video Games, Gaming, AdTech

Frameplay

Frameplay is an iontrinsic advertising platform for video games. Frameplay offers a transparent, self-serve, gamer-first experience that encourages creativity whilst delivering sophisticated data and analytics to both advertisers and developers.

Founded: 2018
Headquarters: San Francisco, US
Specialties: Video Game, Video Game Advertising, AdTech 

Gadsme

Gadsme is the most advanced in-game advertising platform for video games and esports. Gadsme offers display, video and audio ad formats through a single SDK and normalised access to demand partners. Gadsme is a fully transparent platform giving complete control for advertisers and developers alike, with many unique features, real-time-data, and clickable and IAB-approved ad formats to ensure success. 

Founded: 2020

Headquarters: Paris, France

Specialties: Mobile, PC, consoles, video games

iion

iion is a leading advertising and monetization platform reaching audience segments across all gaming environments. iion provides AdTech platforms for game developers, publishers and advertisers and offers various in-game ad formats.

Founded: 2019

Headquarters: Sydney, NSW, Australia

Specialties: Mobile Game Monetization, Yield Management, RTB, Premium Inventory, Mobile Advertising, AMP monetization, and Header Bidding.

Overwolf

Overwolf offers an all-in-one platform for creating, sharing, and monetizing in-game apps and mods to create and deliver gaming experiences. 


Founded: 2010
Headquarters: Tel-Aviv, Israel
Specialties: Gaming Apps, Gaming Mods, AdTech 

Pubfinity 

Pubfinity provides advancement of in-game advertising with the only built by and for game publishers to allow advertisers to maximize revenue without detracting from the user experience. 

Founded: 2019
Headquarters: Newtown Square, US
Specialties: Gaming apps

Roblox

Roblox builds tools and platforms that are home to over 30 million immersive experiences, from gaming to social hangouts, to concerts, sports, fashion shows, education, and entertainment.

Founded: 2004
Headquarters: San Mateo, US
Specialties: Virtual Reality, Mobile Gaming, Social Gaming, Virtual Building, 

Super League Gaming

Super League Gaming is a full-service cloud studio that produces compelling in-game content for livestream and social channels to deliver full campaign objectives and connect with players of the largest metaverse environments. 

Founded: 2014
Headquarters: Santa Monica, US 
Specialties: Gaming, community gaming, metaverse advertising

Supersonic Studios

Supersonic Studios offers powerful technology to boost game performance and create enjoyable gaming experiences for the players. 

Founded: 2020
Headquarters: Tel-Aviv, Israel
Specialties: Gaming, Mobile Gaming

AdTech

What Is In-Game Advertising and How Does It Work?

Mike Sweeney, +1

Jan 13, 2022

AdTech

7 Great Examples of In-Game Advertising

Natalia Figas

Jan 17, 2022

AdTech

What Are the Challenges and Opportunities of In-Game Advertising?

Paulina Zawiślak, +1

Mar 17, 2023

The post Top Companies in the In-Game Advertising Industry appeared first on Clearcode.

Firefox has introduced a number of features to strengthen user privacy. For the most part, this means preventing cross-site tracking — a process used by AdTech companies and social media sites to identify individuals across different websites — by blocking third-party cookies and other known trackers, and preventing device fingerprinting. 

In the infographic below, we list the main privacy and security features that Firefox has implemented over the years and highlight the impact these changes have had on the programmatic advertising, AdTech and MarTech industries.

A Timeline of Mozilla Firefox’s Privacy Changes and the Impact on AdTech & MarTech

Mozilla released version 0.1 of its Firefox web browser on September 23, 2002. Since then, it has become one of the most popular web browsers, used by over 200 million users each month.

Over the past few years, Firefox has introduced a number of features to protect the privacy of its users. 

In this infographic, we highlight the main privacy features that Firefox has implemented and explain the impact these changes are having on the programmatic advertising, AdTech and MarTech industries. 

A Snapshot of Firefox’s Privacy Settings

A Timeline of Firefox’s Privacy Changes

September 23, 2002

Version 1.0 of Firefox is released. Back then the web browser was called Phoenix. The name was later changed to Firebird on April 14, 2003, and then to Firefox on February 9, 2004.

Throughout the first few years, the changes to the browser were mainly associated with the functionality and user experience, after that time the upgrades were also related to user privacy.

January 31, 2011

Firefox 4 implemented the Do Not Track (DNT) feature to allow users to opt-out of tracking from websites that collected data regarding a user’s activity across multiple websites. 

June 26, 2012 

Firefox 14 introduced a new detector to collect, analyze, and identify the cause of the browser freezing and reduce potential problems that could arise through the unwanted use of third-party applications, such as malware.

August 6, 2013 

Firefox 23 enforced a default feature that blocked multiple pieces of content to protect users against man-in-the-middle attacks.

July 22, 2014

Firefox 31 enabled an added search field to block malware from downloaded files.

March 7, 2017

Firefox 52 introduced user warnings for insecure HTTP pages that require users to log in.

January 21, 2018

Firefox 48 introduced the Change Timezone add-on that allows users toggle their timezone on and off to protect their privacy.

May  9, 2018

Firefox 60 redesigned the Cookies and Site Storage section in the Preferences tab for greater clarity and control of first- and third-party cookies. 

March 13, 2018

Firefox 59 removed path information from referrers to prevent cross-site tracking of users when browsing in private browsing mode. 
October 23, 2018

Firefox 63 introduces content blocking, allowing users to block third-party cookies and block known trackers. Content blocking became part of Enhanced Tracking Prevention (ETP) with the release of Firefox 70.

September 3, 2019

Firefox 68 turned its Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) privacy feature on by default to protect users from advertising, social media, and analytics trackers. Cryptomining and fingerprinting protections were also added to the Strict setting in the Privacy & Security preferences section.

October 22, 2019

Firefox 70 implemented more privacy protection features to Enhanced Tracking Protection and strengthened the Firefox Lockwise security feature. 

January 7, 2020 

Firefox 72 started blocking fingerprinting scripts by default to protect users from invasive online tracking as part of an update to its Enhanced Tracking Protection feature. 

March 10, 2020

Firefox 74 implemented the Adds-ons Manager option to remove add-ons installed by third-party applications. This release also included a feature called Facebook Container that prevents Facebook from tracking users around the web by blocking features such as Facebook logins, likes, and comments on third-party sites.

June 30, 2020

Firefox 78 introduced the Protections Dashboard which includes consolidated reports about tracking protection, data breaches, and password management.

July 28, 2020

Firefox 79 released Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0 (ETP 2.0), which blocks redirect tracking (also known as bounce tracking), which is an advanced tracking technique.

October 20, 2020

Firefox 82 added the option to automatically purge cookies from sites not visited in 30 days.

January 26, 2021

Firefox 85 implemented a supercookies protection feature. Supercookies hide in different parts of a web browser and can continue to track users online even after they have cleared their cookies.

February 23, 2021

Firefox 86 introduced Total Cookie Protection to ETP Strict Mode, meaning cookies can’t track a user from site to site.

March 23, 2021

Firefox 87 introduced SmartBlock, a new privacy feature that fixes web pages broken by Mozilla’s tracking protections.

June 1, 2021

Firefox 89 enabled the Total Cookie Protection feature in Private Browsing mode, which was originally launched in Firefox’s ETP Strict mode. Total Cookie Protection isolates third-party cookies to the website on which they were created, meaning they can’t be recognized across different websites.

July 13, 2021

Firefox 90 included version 2 of its SmartBlock feature and started blocking Facebook scripts to prevent them from tracking users.

August 10, 2021

Firefox 91 introduced improvements to its Total Cookie Protection feature that included improved logic for clearing cookies, preventing hidden data leaks, and allowing users to see which websites are storing information in localStorage.

October 5, 2021

Firefox 93 introduced a new referrer-tracking-protection feature in the Strict Tracking Protection setting and Private Browsing to reduce the amount of information passed on to websites via the HTTP Referer header. SmartBlock 3.0 was also released.

November 2, 2021

Firefox 94 released Site Isolation, a feature protecting against side-channel attacks such as Spectre.

December 7, 2021

Firefox 95 enabled the Site Isolation feature to all users.

June 14, 2022

Firefox turned its Total Cookie Protection feature on by default for all Firefox users worldwide. Previously, it was just available in Private browsing mode and for users who had selected the Strict mode in the Enhanced Tracking Protection’s settings.

The Impact of Firefox’s Privacy Settings on AdTech and MarTech

The biggest impact Firefox has on AdTech and MarTech is the fact that it blocks third-party cookies by default, meaning companies can’t identify users across different websites. 

This limitation means that the following activities are much harder to run:

• Behaviorally targeted advertising
• Frequency capping
• Campaign measurement
• Attribution

There are a few ways to run these activities without third-party cookies, such as using identifiers created by first-party data, but they won’t scale in the same way as third-party cookies. 

There are many other alternatives to third-party cookies that are being explored by advertisers, publishers and AdTech companies, including contextual targeting, Google Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox (still in progress), universal ID solutions, and data clean rooms.

The post A Timeline of Firefox’s Privacy Changes and Impact on AdTech & MarTech [infographic] appeared first on Clearcode.

The Main Trends and Challenges in AdTech, MarTech and Programmatic Advertising in 2022

Video Streaming, Augmented Reality (AR) and Podcasts

As AdTech rapidly matures, a variety of companies and new channels have sprung up as a result. Some, like the metaverse which remains an enigma, are more vague than others. I see video streaming, augmented reality (AR) and podcasts as the main trends that every marketer will use at least once in the coming years.  

Video-streaming revenue is set to reach $94 billion by 2025. The format and relative placements draw the attention of marketers. Real-time communication sessions, live-stream announcements, setting up online events are major points customers tend to appreciate. 

In addition, by 2023 the AR market is estimated to be worth $18 billion. Apart from an improved shopping experience, augmented reality gives consumers a real feel for the things on offer, for instance providing them with a virtual tour. AR can also help consumers make decisions faster, saving expenses on logistics for business owners.

And the last thing I’d like to emphasize is that podcasts, consumed by almost a half of Millenials and over 40% of Gen Zers, grew fast enough for advertising and monetization opportunities. 

Dmitriy Atamaniuk, CEO at GDM (Global Digital Marketing Group). 

Deep Analysis and More Cord-Cutting

To be honest, there is nothing newer than deeper analysis, which absolutely depends on technology and human efforts. Understanding who your customers are and where they come from is an everlasting challenge, so there is a constant need for analytics and attribution tools that can help marketers divide an audience pool into separate segments easily and develop a personal approach to each group.

What’s more, behind successful communication and marketing results always stands entertainment which is easy to bring to social media, OTT/CTV, audio, AR/VR, and gaming. The great migration of cord-cutters is on the rise, and according to industry predictions, 60 million US households will have shifted from cable and satellite TV to streaming services by 2024. 

The COVID-19 lockdowns call for refocusing of ad dollars towards the platforms and services that help get the most out of the industry. My advice for entrepreneurs of any niche would be to conduct a profound analysis of the leaders in the industry. Don’t be afraid of imaginative leaps  — they can sometimes save you. 

Nikita Platotnenko, CEO at VlogBox.

AdTech, MarTech and Programmatic Advertising Predictions for 2022

Web Advertising

There were a lot of surprises in 2021 around Google Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox, do you think 2022 will be the year where Privacy Sandbox enters the home straight or will there be more changes on the horizon that could potentially delay its introduction in 2023?

RTB House associates are active participants in all of the major communities, such as the W3C,  and yet we still find it difficult to predict new outcomes from the ongoing investigations being conducted by CMA, ICO, and DG COMP. 

Indeed, the regulatory’s recommendations, opinions and agreements with Google will have a huge effect on the implementation and timeline of the deprecation of 3rd-party cookies on Chrome.

I am positive that the test phase will commence in 2022 and all industry stakeholders will gain access to some significant insights. The question is: How many of these entities will openly share results from the testing phase? And how well are companies prepared for new browser-side marketing APIs?  Results from the Chrome origin trials may impact the deadline by introducing the need to improve particular proposals within the Privacy Sandbox.

Finally, on June 21, Google announced its “Opt Out of Ads Personalization” which is effectively its “light” version of Apple’s “ATT”.  And following Google’s post back in January 2020, this announcement will no doubt be a precursor to the inevitable, which is a future without AAID (Android Advertising ID) that will probably develop further in the year ahead. 

In 2022, we might expect Google to publish a Privacy Sandbox proposal for an in-app environment. Already, current parts of the Attribution Reporting API are showing that Chrome has begun developing the use case of interoperability between in-app and web.

Łukasz Włodarczyk, VP of Programmatic Ecosystem Growth & Innovation at RTB House.

In-App Mobile Advertising

2021 was the year when Apple rolled out its privacy changes to its IDFA. What has been the impact so far and what other privacy changes can we expect to see in the in-app mobile advertising industry in 2022?

When Apple first announced it would be making privacy changes to its IDFA back in June 2020, many people in the industry knew that the revenue impact on app developers would be severe due to the low opt-in rates that would follow as a result of the changes. 

Now that these changes have been live since April 26, 2021, we’ve already started to witness the impact. 

It’s been reported that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Snap collectively lost 12% of their advertising revenues in Q3 and Q4 of 2021 as a result of Apple’s IDFA changes. That accounts for an eye-watering $10 billion loss in revenue. 

But it’s not only the large players that have felt the negative impacts of Apple’s IDFA changes. 

App developers have seen the cost of acquiring new users rise and AdTech companies have seen CPMs on iOS inventory drop as a result. 

On the flip side, the nature of supply and demand has seen CPMs on Android increase, meaning AdTech companies may have recovered some of those losses experienced on iOS inventory. 

In terms of what’s ahead in 2022, Google has already rolled out its own privacy changes to its Advertising ID (aka Google Advertising ID and Android Advertising ID). In late 2021, Google started removing its Advertising ID if a user has opted out of personalized advertising. Prior to this change, the Advertising ID could still be passed to AdTech companies and mobile measurement platforms even if the user had opted out of personalized advertising. 

This is a much lighter approach than the one Apple adopted with its IDFA — i.e. instead of asking users to opt in to providing their Advertising ID, Google will simply zero it out if the user has opted out of personalized advertising, which the user will need to do themselves in their phone’s settings.

But many users have opted out of personalized advertising? 

According to AdTech company Singular, only around 2% of Android users globally have opted out of personalized advertising. It’s highly unlikely that this number will increase significantly under Google’s current Advertising ID policy, so we can expect the impact to be rather minor.

Michael Sweeney, Head of Marketing at Clearcode.

CTV & OTT Advertising

There’s a lot of improvements being made in CTV and OTT advertising, e.g. around programmatic deals, measurement, and ad fraud. Where do you think most of the progress will be made in 2022?

According to eMarketer, US CTV ad spend in 2022 will grow by 32.3% and reach $19.10 billion. Yet, CTV measurement remains the biggest challenge for a majority of marketers. 

The main problem here for many lies in the realization that CTV comes from two worlds: traditional TV and AdTech. While the actual viewing experience resembles linear, CTV’s infrastructure comes mainly from digital and therefore results have to be measured accordingly. 

Many CTV players, including TheViewPoint, have been working on educational initiatives to make sure everyone in the industry is on the same page. This has already made a huge difference and will continue to do so in 2022.

Data will definitely remain king in 2022. The rivalry among CTV operating systems, the entry of social media companies in the CTV space as well as numerous acquisitions are supporting this. Data is where I believe we’ll see the most progress and the most fierce competition.

In terms of targeting, which is fueled by data, I think in 2022 we will pay even more attention to its sustainability. New AI-driven algorithms, including automatic content recognition (ACR), are able to analyze how people interact with content, what genres they prefer, and how all this correlates with ads. Therefore, in 2022 we will definitely see more advanced personalized ads empowered by contextual targeting and deterministic data.

eMarketer says that 7 out of 10 CTV transactions in the US are executed programmatically. And this number will only grow. Although direct deals are still popular, particularly among premium publishers, CTV programmatic guaranteed (PG) and private marketplace (PMP) deals have been gaining momentum in the US. This is mainly due to programmatic auctions driving incremental audience reach for advertisers through pinpoint targeting and real-time reporting, which is only likely to improve in 2022.

Finally, I’m convinced we’ll find new ways of protecting brand safety and combat numerous CTV fraud schemes. We have been advocating for SPO and DPO practices in 2021. With the release of more unified tools like IAB’s ads.cert 2.0 protocol, the CTV industry will have more means of building transparent supply chains.

Daniel Elad, Chief Strategy Officer at TheViewPoint. 

DOOH Advertising

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising was on an upward trajectory when COVID19 first hit in the first half of 2020. Despite being the hardest-hit advertising channel, it has bounced back. Do you believe the momentum in DOOH advertising will continue where it left off before COVID19 or are there other challenges that could hinder its growth?  

It has been an interesting couple of years for digital out-of-home (DOOH).

The start of 2020 saw programmatic outdoor set to evolve planning and execution processes for buyers, as they began to leverage the added flexibility, control and autonomy offered by real-time buying at scale, and developed smarter tactical executions to increase on-target reach and eliminate wastage.

This growth trajectory has been somewhat impeded by COVID-19, however even as the situation continues to evolve and case numbers increase, there are definite signs of green shoots, with the second half of 2021 seeing record numbers of advertisers trialling programmatic campaigns, and record numbers of programmatic DOOH (pDOOH) impressions delivered.

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, programmatic outdoor in the Australian market has been developing well over its formative years, and is now marching into the mainstream of campaign delivery in 2022, with broad adoption from both supply and demand side. 

In the current environment of disrupted and unpredictable people-movement patterns, the additional features offered by real-time bidding — e.g. custom scheduling, pacing and targeting, as well as mobile data activation, dynamic triggers incl. weather targeting and frictionless dayparting to name a few — can provide a significant advantage over “traditional” tenancy bookings in empowering marketers to remain agile in pursuing advertiser outcomes.

Agencies and trading desks are adapting and evolving quickly – developing playbooks to determine which clients, campaigns, use cases and market conditions best align with programmatic, traditional or hybrid OOH execution models. Now that programmatic outdoor has reached a strong baseline level of adoption, with supply across almost all Australian media owners, availability via almost all of the major omnichannel DSPs, and trading by all major agency groups, pDOOH is primed to be an execution method of choice for marketers in 2022.

In particular, we’re seeing a proliferation of new advertisers — both digital pure-plays and brick-and-mortar brands — who are accessing digital budgets to trial pDOOH now that many of the targeting techniques used online are available across out-of-home inventory in their DSP.

However, it’s not clear sailing from here on in — there are many challenges from regulatory (e.g. increased privacy regulations limiting device ID availability) to technological (universal support for verification & HTML creatives, upgrades to legacy CMS platforms etc, and more robust post-exposure analytics) that will need to be addressed as pDOOH matures to ensure it can continue to deliver +1s for brands.

The future is bright for programmatic outdoor.

Braden Clarke, Programmatic Director at Val Morgan Outdoor (VMO).

Digital Audio

CTV and OTT advertising has received the lion’s share attention in the programmatic industry recently, but a lot of positive news has been coming out of the digital audio area — podcasts are increasing in popularity, Spotify recently reported a record quarter for ad revenue, and the average time spent listening to digital audio is on the rise. As we head into 2022, what are the biggest opportunities for brands and agencies wanting to invest in digital audio advertising? 

Firstly, it’s important for us to apply the appropriate lens to what we’re talking about. Depending on what side of the fence of the digital advertising ecosystem you sit in, the views will deviate about the similarities and disparities between online video and audio.

We see many leaning right into the video opportunity and leaning out on the audio side. It can be difficult to comprehend the difference in this approach.  At the end of the day, the only fundamental difference between the two is the visual component.

Brands and advertisers alike have matured their programmatic buying capabilities. For many, audio can become another tool in their media plan to help connect messaging with audiences.  

As we look forward to 2022, the biggest opportunities for brands and agencies are:

• Audio is another string to the bow: Buyers and agencies have been trading programmatically for several years and their tech stacks and buying setups have matured. Therefore, adding audio is not a matter of how — it’s the why.
• Define the role of audio: Many are still struggling with how to incorporate audio into a narrative, podcasting and streaming to align with different behaviours and predominantly reflect ‘personal’ listening.
• Subscription isn’t the way to go: With lots of talk and advances towards subscription podcast services in 2021, we’ve yet to see an incredible amount of success.  We’ll see a shift back to ad-funded free content which will help push further growth in podcast consumption.
•  Addressability: Whilst all audio is not equal when it comes to addressability, many publishers are enabling this across audio streaming on owned assets.  Like video, there is an ever-growing opportunity to target specific audiences

If past history is anything to go by, then 2022 will have a lot in store for us. Brands and agencies will have no shortage of work to do in this space and I’m sure we’ll see new niche skill sets emerge to capitalize on the opportunities.

Tim Armstrong, Head of Digital Platforms, Capability and Audience at NOVA Entertainment. 

IAB Tech Lab

1. What are the IAB Tech Lab’s main goals and focuses for 2022?
 
There are three key areas of focus for the Tech Lab next year: 

1. Continued investment in identity, privacy, and data protection initiatives.
2. Supporting the growth of CTV as a channel through new and revised technical standards, including measurement SDKs and improved guidance.
3. Evolving frameworks and investing in research that helps to combat fraud, ensures brand safety and improves transparency in ad transactions via Transparency Center

2. What new things (e.g. standards) can we expect to see come out of the IAB Tech Lab in 2022?

Identity remains a key focus and priority for us next year. With this you can expect to see more developments from our Project Rearc and identity work streams where we continue to develop standards that protect consumer privacy online, and where we work with the industry to redefine addressability.
 
Additionally, given the volume of opportunity for our members within the space of CTV, in 2022 the IAB Tech Lab will continue to support the growth of this channel by expanding the portfolio of technical standards for CTV. This includes the launch of new initiatives such as the Open Measurement SDK for CTV, as well as revisiting existing standards, such as OpenRTB, to deliver updates that will better support the transition of billions of dollars of global ad spend from linear television to CTV.
 
Lastly, you can expect to see us doing more work in driving awareness and adoption of our existing standards through proof of concepts, research, and increased guidance through our Programmatic Guides and more.

3. How is the IAB Tech Lab helping support AdTech companies, publishers, and advertisers navigate the ever-changing privacy landscape?
 
Since 2020, through our Project Rearc working group, we’ve brought together stakeholders from across the industry to work together to understand the use cases of identifiers within different companies and to evaluate the impact that comes from their removal.
 
Through this group we have gone a long way in educating the industry in what the future of addressability looks like, and earlier in 2021 we launched a portfolio of solutions that support varying levels of addressability — from ‘Seller Defined Audiences’, which supports environments where there are no identifiers, to our work to open source and standardize UID 2.0, which is an identifier framework developed by TheTradeDesk enabling privacy safe 1:1 linking of audiences. 
 
Included in this list is also the Global Privacy platform, which addresses global privacy regulations, ID-sources.json, the SKAdNetwork ID list, Accountability Platform and many more. All of these solutions work to build security, privacy and accountability in the heart of our system designs.
 
We look forward to continuing to evolve this work and drive adoption of these standards in 2022.

Shailley Singh, Senior VP of Product at the IAB Tech Lab.

Data & Privacy

What Does the EU’s DSA and DMA Mean for AdTech?

Mike Sweeney, +1

Oct 10, 2022

AdTech

AdTech in 2023: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities

Mike Sweeney

Feb 22, 2023

AdTech

The Future of Advertising and AdTech in the Metaverse

Natalia Figas

Mar 01, 2023

The post AdTech and MarTech Predictions and Trends in 2022 appeared first on Clearcode.