IAB Successfully Completes First Level of PlayFronts

Despite decades of successful advertising within the gaming ecosystem ingame ads and ad sponsorships with game publishers have historically remained on the peripherals of media plans The PlayFronts was a watershed moment in recognition of the scale and hold that gaming now has on our culture and the changing media consumption habits along with generational shifts that are increasingly pointing to the lack of inclusion of gaming as part of the media mix as a missWith Meta as principal sponsor and programmatic omnichannel platform Effectv as title sponsor other sponsors of the event included Anzu ActivisionBlizzard Media AdMix Bidstack Frameplay Niantic PlayerWON RIOT Games SuperAwesome Epic Games Twitch and Zynga Insight Sponsors included IGN and Unity Infillion Super League THECE and Twitter As a sign of hot the marketplace is getting we heard several companies comment that they had wanted to sponsor the event but it had been sold out months agoThe success of the IAB PlayFronts event can in part be attributed to the passion and herculean efforts that Zoe Soon Vice President Experience Center at the IAB expended in order to make the day informative high utility fun and adhering to schedule Soon who served as panel sherpa throughout the day emphasized that the next generation of households are gamers and explained that now is the time to test quotImmersive interaction in gaming will be threaded through the digital experience Now is the time to learnquotSoon explained that this was the perfect time to launch an event of this caliber quotYou have the perfect storm tremendous growth in usage during the pandemic coupled with the huge rise in interest and activity in the Metaverse While a truly interoperable Metaverse may be years off people see gaming as a language blending with social and commercequotConsistent themes during the eventGaming covers a broad spectrum from PCConsole action gamers to CasualMobileFirst gamersGamers cannot be defined by the old stereotype of 15 year old quotnerds in the basementquot It is a global diverse community with Meta providing data that shows 75 of diverse groups play games and 82 of LGBTQMarketers should recognize that gamers are a community and provide experiences that add value to that community In action games such as Fortnite or Call of Duty interruptive advertising will never be accepted Casual games such as Candy Crush are more flexibleGaming publishers and platforms are leaning in to quotattentionquot as a key differentiator Longtime digital media agency leader Cary Tilds now Chief Strategy and Operations Officer at FramePlay chided the digital advertising industry for misplaced metrics while announcing a brand new attentionmetric quotWe have been chasing scale at the cost of quality We39ve lost sight of what matters the consumer paying attention and providing those consumers advertising they valuequot The company announced quotintrinsic frameinviewquot an AIdriven metrics tool which was verified through eyetracking studies from two separate companies Lumen and EyeSquare Said Tilds quotWe have verified computer vision with human visionquot Global ad agency Dentsu is the first to use quotintrinsic frameinviewquot which Vice President Director Global Media Partnerships Joanne Leong says will enable gaming to be incorporated into the agency39s digital datadriven media mix modeling tools for the first timeSeveral marketers shared success stories in their foray into gaming Willem Dinger Director of Global Sponsorships for CPG giant Unilever listed a myriad of gaming programs that Unilever has executed including a highly successful Virtual Food Waste Island program on Nintendo39s Animal Crossing for Hellmann39s mayonnaise around the topic of food sustainability Says Dinger quotUnilever wants to be a leader in driving sustainable business improving the health of the planet and contributing to an inclusive world We need to add value and connect with gamers in a meaningful wayquot Unilever has created a gaming centerofexcellence UPlay to forge Unilever as a champion of gaming In Dinger39s words quotWe see gaming as the center of culture community and commerce To connect in with this audience in a meaningful way is a brilliant opportunity to connect consumers with our brandsquotOne of the most interesting examples of the respect that gaming has achieved was a panel featuring Anzuio CoFounder and CEO Itamar Benedy and Krishan Bhatia President and Chief Business Officer Global Advertising at NBCU Anzuio is a platform that can serve native dynamic creative into videogames and eSports so think virtual stadium signage in sports videogames NBCU recently announced that they have taken a stake in Anzu and will represent ad sales for Anzuio in the US and the UK Bhatia intimated that Anzu39s offerings could be bundled in with NewFront and Upfront packages as that season fastly approachesOverall the IAB PlayFront audience and sponsors seem to have been quite satisfied with the content and attendance Confirms Adam Shlacter Head of Marketing Strategic and Brand Partnerships at AR company Niantic best known for Pokamp233mon Go and a sponsor of the event quotI thought it was a great event and the right time for the industry to really focus on this space as consumers are spending an increasing amount of time energy and money across this massive and evolving landscapequot Given the exponential number of cryptogaming metaverse VR and AR companies that are launching every day might we expect an even bigger IAB PlayFronts next year Says Soon quotWhen we originally concepted this event we considered calling it an Emerging Media Upfront However we decided to call it PlayFronts since gaming is an onramp for the metaverse ARVR and emerging Web3 technologies We look forward to potentially addressing more of those companies at next year39s PlayFrontsquotGame onClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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IAB Successfully Completes First Level of PlayFronts

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