Gameloft is known these days for app games that become mainstream IPs and app games based on mainstream IPs.
Earlier this year, the French developer with offices in Toronto and Montreal announced COMBO, a game-and-universe-crossing media network offering advertisers access to 1.3 Billion monthly active players through billboards, other gamified elements and even full games like Disney Dreamlight Valley and Lego Legacy: Heroes.
The company’s new whitepaper [you will need to give name, company and email to read in full] is business-titled “The Marketing ROI in Gaming.” Put in non-business speak, they want to help more companies like Disney and Lego put their products and services in games to capture the attention of players.
According to a January report from marketing publication The Drum, Gameloft has data suggesting that gamers are just fine with game ads. The article points to a third-party study suggesting, “Some 41% of people said they were likely to pay attention to ads in mobile games, compared to 17% for internet advertising, and 15% each for magazines and billboards.”
The thing you need to know from the whitepaper is that Gameloft has something called “Gameloft Quality Score.” It aims to measure the effectiveness of a given advertising campaign by analyzing the synergy between the quality of the context in which the campaign is delivered and the creative assets used to deliver it. Gameloft wants to see more ads in games, but they also want to make sure those ads are of a quality desirable for both the marketer and the gamer. Movies are great for this. Think of how Sony has used the James Bond films to subtly advertise Sony phones, VAIO laptops and Aston Martin vehicles.
“It is essential to understand the relationship between the contextual environment of a campaign and the advertising effectiveness. Our expertise at Gameloft for brands gives us great visibility on how the game context influences the ways a player processes an advertising message delivered in a video game and how to more effectively measure its impact on brand affinity and return on investment”, says Alexandre Tan, executive vice-president of advertising and brand partnerships at Gameloft. “Thanks to the Gameloft Quality Score, brands are now able to more accurately measure their Marketing ROI [return on investment], “concludes Tan.
