Gameloft Leaves a Viewable Impression on the Digital Ad Space
Gameloft Advertising Solutions received high viewability scores from Moat, more than doubling the industry benchmarks.
With all advertisers looking harder than ever for effective and safe environments for their ads, it is all the more important that Gameloft addresses the pressing issues in digital advertising.
- Transparency
- Viewability
- Innovation
That’s why when the viewability results from Moat came in, it was a good day at Gameloft Advertising Solutions. Moat, an Oracle owned company that specializes in measuring the effectiveness of digital media, provided verifiable proof of the Gameloft difference.
Everyone can now see how effective and safe running ads inside the Gameloft environment is.
The results confirmed that Gameloft Advertising Solutions provides a high quality service. With advertisers increasingly using high viewability scores as a means to select media channels, it’s creating a virtuous circle of good advertising.
“We have seen constant growth on our side ever since we implemented third party viewability verification.”
— Alexis Roy, Advertising Project Manager
The world of online advertising was rocked by the arrival of metrics that can measure how much an ad is actually seen by an end user. Traditional metrics for digital ad viewership do not take into account the fact that an ad may not be on a page or may not even load, not to mention the ever present issues of bots and adblockers.
According to the Media Rating Council’s standards, an ad is considered viewable for display formats (still images) when 50% of the ad’s pixels are on screen for 1 consecutive second and when 50% of the ad’s pixels are on screen for 2 consecutive seconds for video formats.
Gameloft Advertising Solutions has 95% of their video ads and 76% of their display ads being counted as viewed. To put the numbers in context, the industry benchmarks are 46% for video ads and 54% for display ads.
The Gameloft edge is at the core of its business.
Games, especially mobile games, offer a very unique way to engage with users through the interactive environment that is inherent to the platform. That doesn’t mean Gameloft Advertising Solutions is all fun. The goal is to look for technical solutions to soft problems.
“Non-Human traffic stops when precision measurement begins”
— Moat Homepage
The digital ad space suffers from rampant mistrust. On all ends of the spectrum, from users to advertisers, there’s a feeling that everyone is trying to trick everyone else. In general, consumers don’t want to see ads that aren’t relevant to them and advertisers don’t want to hurt their brand by producing irrelevant ads or worse, showing their ads next to inappropriate content.
Until very recently, these issues in the advertising world were something of an open secret. However, when Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer of P&G decided to shine a light on how the digital ad space wastes money and consumer attention with useless and ineffective ads, Gameloft not only agreed, but had already been investigating viewability since the creation of Gameloft Advertising Solutions.
“When Marc Pritchard spoke out we were already on the right path and it was more just proof that we made a good decision when we started building our proprietary ad tech in 2014.”
— Alexis Roy, Advertising Project Manager
The focus is on the long term importance of transparency. There’s a business interest in building trust and assuring advertisers that they are investing in a good, reliable product. Gameloft Advertising Solutions is open about the shared interest in profitability, but makes it clear that focusing on transparency is simply the right thing to do.
“ The most important thing is to have a good variety of creatives that are properly targeted for the users, so it’s easier to engage them. Then viewability — make sure the ads are in view — because you’re not going to bill your clients if the ad was not even viewed by the user.”
— Alexis Roy, Advertising Project Manager
With Gameloft Advertising Solutions, many of the digital advertising issues are eliminated from the start by making it clear to advertisers how a user will see an ad.
Increasing Transparency
Being open about advertising doesn’t mean sharing trade secrets. It’s about making it clear that advertisers don’t have to rely on a promise and can easily verify how effective an ad is.
Beyond respecting and following the industry standards, the real benefit of being certified by third parties like DoubleVerify or Sizmek is the trust it builds with advertisers.
Third party verification increases transparency and makes it much easier for advertisers to not only find the diamond in the rough, but to filter out all the rough at the start.
Gameloft Advertising Solutions supports IAB standards like MRAID and Open RTB 2.3, which ensure that all Gameloft ads will work across all platforms, from classic display banners to innovative rich media solutions.
Gameloft Advertising Solutions is also Nielsen Digital Ad Rating certified, which means that they can provide verifiable insight into the audience the ads are reaching. That insight can then be used to develop better targeting and further increase the effectiveness of a given campaign.
The best part of all of this is no one has to believe Gameloft Advertising Solutions when they claim to be above the industry standard. Third party verification allows even the biggest skeptic to dig deep into the numbers and see the performance results for themselves.
Battling Fraud and Ensuring Viewability
Battling fraud and viewability go hand in hand.
The digital ad space has been plagued with false views from either bad design or malicious intent since the beginning of its existence. In contrast to this unfortunate reality, Gameloft Advertising Solutions has always strived to avoid fraud and increase viewability. The very nature of creating in-app solutions mitigates some of the common issues with viewability often found in desktop ads.
“With in-app advertising you don’t have web constraints like scrolling below the fold. The creative is displayed in full screen at all times.”
— Alexis Roy, Advertising Project Manager
Gameloft of course does not only rely on the in-app experience itself to battle fraud and ensure viewability and has implemented the HTTPS protocol to further prevent ad fraud on a technical level. At the same time Gameloft Advertising Solutions has partnered with Trustworthy Accountability Group certified Moat to measure the viewability of Gameloft ads and further verify its fraud-free environment.
The results of partnering with Moat have been remarkable with viewability scores that are often double the industry standard.
Working with Gameloft Advertising Solutions and Gameloft games also means having an incredible amount of control over where ads will actually appear. The in-app inventory is owned and operated by Gameloft and that means there are never any surprises. Advertisers can choose who they target with precise demographic targeting and even the category of games where the ads will be displayed.
“As Gameloft owns 100% of its inventory, we know the game typology. If the brand does not want to be associated with violence we won’t put them in Modern Combat or if they don’t want bad language we won’t put them in Gangstar, for instance. These were the first actions we took when we started developing our ad tech, because it’s basic targeting.”
— Alexis Roy, Advertising Project Manager
Innovation and Creativity
Gameloft Advertising Solutions pushes the creative limits of advertising and is always looking to try out new ad formats to increase engagement and user interaction. Gameloft’s in-house creative agency, Beyond Digital, boasts over 100 artists and developers that are constantly working on mobile-centric creative ad formats, notably with branded minigames like the one developed for the Paris bid to host the 2024 Olympics.
Gameloft games also allow seamless integration into the game space with native ad formats that can enhance a user’s gaming experience and thus create a positive brand association. These ads are never intrusive and the user has complete control over the interaction. The idea is to make users want to interact with the brand and not force or trick them into interacting with it.
To build trust with consumers, Gameloft Advertising Solutions also puts a lot of importance on the user experience of their ads by capping the ad display frequency and having the option to close an ad always available.
All ad formats also go through rigorous in-house testing to assure only the best ads make it to release and this insistence on quality pays off not only in high viewability and engagement, but in awards all over the world.
While there is a lot of discussion about viewability in the digital ad space, there are also issues in traditional media that Gameloft can overcome. Branded minigames have proven to be an incredible way to increase engagement and viewability by enabling the user to interact directly with the brand.
That level of engagement puts Gameloft Advertising Solutions above traditional media like TV and radio advertising where a consumer can just leave the room when an ad airs. After all, there’s no real way to measure how many people are using commercials as nothing more than a bathroom break.
When the Moat report arrived it was more than a confirmation of all the effort that goes into making good advertising, it validated Gameloft’s position in the market. Gameloft is fully committed to increasing transparency, viewability, and innovation and has the data to prove it.
Make sure you read Alexis Roy’s interview as well:
