In this contributed article from VideoHeroes, Kike Rodríguez, managing director, details the benefits of building an owned-and-operated gaming portfolio for programmatic advertising to both players and marketers. 

Benefits of gaming as an advertising channel

First and foremost, gaming attracts millions of users via fun, interactive missions and objectives, while utilising emerging technologies to integrate creative vision with technical expertise and project management tools to deliver a top user experience. 

Regardless of whether it's a AAA console title, or a fun mobile game, the gaming audience is one of the most engaged consumer sets out there. The advantages of this include the ability to impact the player through unique interactive and audiovisual resources, helping them to remember a specific brand or product like never before. In addition, you can segment, optimise, and measure campaigns without relying on third-party cookies. If you approach gamers with the correct creative for the specific environment, they will not only tolerate your ad but welcome it, a rarity for the advertising industry as a whole in recent years.

To that end, as part of a joint venture agreement, we have partnered with App Swim and have acquired the popular title Subway Idle, downloaded by over 10 million players, as part of our expanding mobile gaming portfolio. To briefly summarise the gameplay mechanics, Subway Idle turns the player into a railroad tycoon, in which they upgrade and maintain a subway map for a growing city, connecting stations and getting trains running. In over 220 levels, players can upgrade their metro system to new locations worldwide as new stations open, thus bolstering player retention. This acquisition strengthens and expands our owned and operated activities, providing both players and agencies with an even more diverse range of mobile games. 

As well as managing our own portfolio of titles, which includes CarRoad and Tik Tac Toe 2, we have also engaged in partnerships with the likes of Scopely, Voodoo, and Zynga, further enhancing the scalability of our offering.

Leveraging AI in gaming and beyond

Across most technological sectors, generative AI is understandably receiving a lot of attention. Leveraging deep learning, these technologies use multi-layered artificial neural networks to identify complex data patterns, enabling tasks previously considered impossible.

In the case of programmatic advertising, generative AI can be used to accurately predict consumer behaviour, without having to rely on privacy-invading personally-identifiable information (PII), thus delivering measurable performance from the front line of AI marketing. These algorithms can respond and adapt in real-time, enabling marketers to optimise their campaigns on the fly. Signals from other channels, such as CTV, audio, and digital-out-of-home (DOOH) can also be leveraged alongside gaming, providing much-needed scalability to marketers in a critical economic environment. 

How do owned-and-operated gaming portfolios bolster both marketers and third-party publishers?

In combination with advanced AI-based programmatic technologies as outlined above, owned-and-operated gaming portfolios facilitate faster, direct, lower-cost connections between buyers and sellers, which provides a huge benefit for agencies, regardless of their scale, who may not be able to achieve the same advantages alone.

Moreover with the looming deprecation of the third-party cookie, first-party data assets will become all the more critical. Advanced programmatic technology within owned-and-operated gaming portfolios can be effectively tailored to fit the specific needs and objectives of individual agencies, opening up new sources of inventory for marketers. 

Lastly, we recognise that brands are increasingly seeking solutions that provide exclusive inventory and direct access, which can reduce distributor fees and ultimately lead to success in the highly competitive digital landscape.