Over 265,000 members of the gaming community gathered in Cologne, Germany, for 2022’s Gamescom, the world’s largest gaming convention.

The event was watched widely around the globe, amassing 130 million views online. Among the game launches announced at the event was Funcom’s Dune: Awakening, an open world survival massively multiplayer online game (MMO), which transports players to the vast and seamless planet of Arrakis, where they must brave the land’s canyons, deserts, and dunes in a mission to uncover the secrets lying beneath the sands. 

And what was Funcom’s mission leading up to the launch? The gaming developer wanted to launch an awareness campaign in the US and major European markets to promote the game immediately after its live announcement at the event. The campaign’s first objective was to engage with gamers who would want to watch a two minute CGI trailer – which far exceeds the ideal ad length format. They then needed to continue capturing consumer attention with short-form creatives running throughout December, the most competitive month of the year. Through Funcom’s partnership with Quantcast, Dune:Awakening’s launch campaign was able to not only meet, but exceed all expectations. 

Driving Video Views & Connecting with Gamers Across Channels 

To put into action the campaign which would set up Dune: Awakening for such success, Funcom’s agency, attract mode, picked scalable channels with huge video reach potential; alongside this they placed a Quantcast pixel on the unpublished game website to be able to capture data points on the earliest conversions. 

Following the announcement at Gamescom, they connected with Funcom’s ideal gamers across channels by capitalising on the conversions and intent, driving views by relevant consumers. For each geographic region, Quantcast built a custom interest-based audience, skewing overall toward a young male demographic but with different levels of audience depending on the region. They then added premium gaming sites to broaden reach in the campaign’s second phase.

Exceeding Expectations

The result? Expectations were exceeded significantly. The campaign successfully connected with consumers most likely to be interested in Dune: Awakening, outperforming attract mode’s initial projections considerably. Notably, the number of video views achieved overtook the campaign’s goal by 2.5 times. A 10% lower CPV and higher view rate than agency benchmarks for MMO games was also achieved, despite the trailer’s long format. The campaign’s second phase also surpassed expectations, again beating industry benchmarks with video views exceeding the goal by a staggering 57%. 

Oscar Guardiola Serra, Funcom’s marketing manager, recognises the role of their partnership with Quantcast in “efficiency and effectively” finding the audiences most interested in their new release, and making Dune:Awakening the most seen trailer and talked about game announced at Gamescom 2022. Their partnership is equally valued by Stefan Wehler, managing director at attract mode, who reports that theirs and Funcom’s preferred DSP is the Quantcast platform, due to the winning results it delivers.