WildTangent, the world’s largest games media
company, today announced the launch of a unique advertising platform,
BrandBoost, which provides brand marketers the opportunity to reward
gamers with complimentary game play and virtual items in return for
brand engagement.
BrandBoost has recently been deployed on Sony Online Entertainment’s
"Free Realms," Outspark.com, and OMGPOP.com. WildTangent is also set to
announce additional partnerships with top social game developers which
will give the company a growing footprint on Facebook and MySpace.
Building on the success of the company’s Sponsored Session?
advertising model for downloadable games, BrandBoost will now make it
possible for leading national advertisers to scale major brand campaigns
across the rapidly growing areas of social games, MMOs and virtual
worlds with guaranteed engagement and proven results. Over the last few
years, WildTangent has run hundreds of millions of Sponsored Sessions
impressions for brands including Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Kraft,
General Mills, Toyota, Honda, Ford, Disney, Sony, Nintendo, EA and
Activision across its game service.
"BrandBoost enables brands to address the enormous scale of social
gaming and virtual worlds with engagement based advertising that is
non-intrusive and delivers tangible value to gamers," said David Madden, executive vice president at
WildTangent. "We’ve created a paradigm in which gamers are seeking out
ads because they know that their experience will be enhanced with access
to content that is typically behind a paywall."
BrandBoost was created to help marketers address the transition of online gaming
audiences to social games, free-to-play (FTP) and subscription-based
MMOs and virtual worlds, all of which employ some form of a pay wall or
micro currency model. Some of the ways that BrandBoost is currently
being deployed include:
- Downloadable Games: Ad engagement unlocks a
free game session - Subscription-based Massively Multiplayer
Online Games (MMOGs): Ad engagement unlocks a free one-day
subscription - Social Games and Free-to-Play (F2P) MMOs and
Virtual Worlds: Ad engagement unlocks virtual items, boosts and
special in-game privileges
BrandBoost embraces an
opt-in advertising model, giving consumers the choice of either paying
for game content with micro-currency or accessing it for free by
engaging with the brand.
A recently released Nielsen survey of 27,000 consumers indicates that
over 85 percent of gamers would prefer to not pay for their digital
games content, highlighting the significant opportunity for trusted
brands to play a role in the online games ecosystem.
When given the choice, more than 95 percent of consumers across the
WildTangent game network choose to engage with brands to access content
for free.
The BrandBoost advertising typically takes the form of a large format
rich media experience consisting of video with a branded, interactive
skin and in some cases players engage with branded mini-games prior to
accessing their game content. This rich media experience is amplified by
IAB-standard companion ads running before and after the experience
delivering multiple impressions with each engagement. The BrandBoost
platform supports all rich media formats in addition to third party ad
serving and advanced targeting capabilities.
"We have run dozens of ad effectiveness studies indicating lifts in
awareness and purchase intent that trump market norms for online
branding campaigns," said Bill Clifford,
vice president of global ad sales at WildTangent. "Quantitative metrics
are equally as impressive, with more than 10 percent of consumers taking
action with the brand beyond the engagement experience, and we’re able
to deliver the scale that our clients need to impact their bottom
lines."
