Enthusiasm about video games is surging, but marketing budgets have yet to catch up to the hype.
Gaming ad spend is growing, but at a slower rate than other emerging channels. Video game ad revenue grew by 7% in 2022 compared to 2021, while CTV revenue grew by 32% and social media revenue grew by 16% in that same period, according to data from eMarketer.
Compared to other hot media channels like CTV and social, the budgets simply haven’t materialized yet because video games are still largely seen as an experimental channel.
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Publishers have historically been viewed as a means to an end in the ad industry.
But with continuous changes in privacy laws and upcoming third-party cookie deprecation, publishers have finally gained more influence over the ad industry supply chain.
This is because they have something that advertisers want: a direct relationship with consumers that enables them to collect and manage first-party data in a privacy-compliant way.
These relationships are critical for the future of ad targeting.
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’Flix It Or Nix It
Is Netflix getting tired of Microsoft already?
Just nine months after naming Microsoft its exclusive ad sales partner, Netflix has a wandering eye, Digiday reports.
According to inside sources, Netflix is exploring the possibility of building its own ad server, which would limit its uses for Microsoft.
It’s not surprising that Netflix would move toward ad tech self-ownership. Netflix partnered because it needed to launch an AVOD service on an insane timeline that precluded building anything. Netflix’s choice of Microsoft rather than an ad tech provider with a streaming service (Google and Comcast’s FreeWheel were frontrunners for the Netflix account) felt like a genius move, because it wouldn’t expose ads data to a content production rival.
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Six years ago, Tim Geenen co-founded Faktor, a consent management platform that was an early leader when privacy-based identity solutions for publishers blossomed after GDPR.
A few years later, Faktor was sold to LiveRamp, where Geenen spent almost three years leading privacy and addressability products in Europe.
This month, Geenen is back with a new startup called Rayn, which he hopes will be a similar standout when the market for “digital twins” becomes a real thing.
Rayn is led by many of the same co-founders and early leaders from Faktor. In the past two weeks, Geenen told AdExchanger the startup has raised about two-thirds of its goal for seed funding.
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By Hana Yoo
Don’t forget to nominate yourself and/or colleagues for our Top Women in Media and Ad Tech Awards! The deadline for entries is March 16.
When Dalton Dorné joined performance marketing agency Tinuiti as CMO in 2018, she brought four companies – Elite SEM and its freshly acquired agencies CPC Strategy, Email Aptitude and OrionCKB – together under a single brand name by 2019.
Dorné had three previous rebrands under her belt. But creating a completely new company name proved eye-opening.
“I learned there were over 8 billion trademarks in our area alone,” Dorné said. (Most existing words were already trademarked.) “Tinuiti” draws inspiration from continuity, ingenuity and acuity – like the continuation of an in-house team.
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The word “choice” has multiple definitions.
As a noun, it means an act of selecting between two or more options. As an adjective, it means something first-rate or of good quality.
Unfortunately, in the online advertising context, the choices presented to consumers are neither feasible to make nor of good quality.
Complexity within the online ad ecosystem vitiates the entire concept of notice and choice. And even if someone is intrepid enough to try and exercise their choice about how advertisers can use their personal data, it might not even matter.
I know this to be true from firsthand experience.
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No Fund At All
After luring influencers with massive creator funds, social media companies are reverting back to an advertising revenue-share model to compensate creators.
Meta will put its Reels Play bonus program for US Instagram users on hold, and Facebook is dropping the fund payouts globally starting next month, Insider reports. Instead, Meta says it will prioritize options that cut creators in on advertising revenue.
While the Reels backtrack seems like a bait-and-switch, influencers have long complained about inconsistent and unsatisfactory payments from creator funds.
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The entire ad industry is obsessed with retail media right now. But the channel’s got a bit of a measurement problem. (Sound familiar?)
Retail media networks (RMNs) give brands that don’t have much first-party data a way to target their customers. But buyers can’t justify spending on RMNs without solid, cross-platform measurement in place. And RMNs are a land of walled gardens.
“Retail media is in serious need of measurement maturity,” said Keith Bryan, president of ads at Best Buy, speaking at the Advertising Research Foundation’s shopper summit in Chicago on Thursday. And plenty of headlines are calling out the fact that measurement might make retail media hit a growth ceiling.
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To view one of the stranger assortments of merchandise out there, look no further than Temu.
If you haven’t heard of it or seen its barrage of paid media, Temu is an app and website where you go to “shop like a billionaire,” aka buy cheap stuff directly from China. By shipping from the factories, it avoids import taxes, keeps prices low and liquidates strange excess merchandise (for example, “girl power” pink dog vests sold in honor of International Women’s Day).
Owned by Pinduoduo (a company that makes Walmart looks small), Temu combines low prices with tons of advertising to give it a top ranking in app stores. Most recently, it made a splash by buying an ad in the Super Bowl – and running it twice during the game.
Temu is one of many commerce topics that Senior Editor James Hercher is bubbling up through his new commerce newsletter, which comes out every Wednesday. In the span of four weeks, James has ripped apart and put back together Meta’s commerce initiatives, Google’s Performance Max product, Shopify and, now, Temu.
We discuss his insights about the commerce space – including what he thinks of Temu – on the first half of the episode. Then we dig into the data privacy beat.
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Hey, and welcome to the 10th edition (!) of AdExchanger’s connected TV roundup.
This week, I’m continuing my binge through the plethora of AVOD streaming services that will each be vying for ad dollars during the 2023 upfronts.
So far, I’ve given you the inside scoop on Netflix’s ad experience and a deep dive on Disney+ with ads. Now, let’s meet Peacock. 📺
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