Game On: Engaging the Ever-Growing Casual Gaming Audience with Rewarded Video Ads

Hamburg, 16. Januar 2023: smartclip, the adtech development unit of RTL Group, has announced the publication of its latest white paper — ‘Game On: Engaging the Ever-Growing Casual Gaming Audience with Rewarded Video Ads’. Featuring key insights into casual gaming advertising, with a specific focus on the high-performing rewarded video ad format, the paper is designed to enhance advertisers’ understanding of this expanding market and support them in reaching casual gaming’s diverse, leaned-in audience.

In recent years, gaming has evolved to become one of the world’s biggest forms of entertainment. And casual games — characterised by their simple, straightforward gameplay, easy accessibility on mobile devices, and minimal time/skill requirement — have become an important segment of the gaming market, reaching a wide audience across all ages, genders, and education and income levels. But navigating this complex environment can be daunting for advertisers and agencies, so providing them with the knowledge and insight they need is vital in order to maximise their success.

Drawing on smartclip Europe’s extensive expertise, underpinned by exclusive real-world data, and contributions from industry executives, alongside facts and figures from the wider industry, this new paper delves into casual gaming from every angle — the games and the gamers, the ad formats and the KPIs, the outdated misconceptions, and the future opportunities. Alongside this valuable intelligence, the paper also explores how brands of all shapes and sizes can take their gaming advertising to the next level, looking at the potential for utilising familiar ad formats to create tailored, scalable campaigns with effective targeting, measurement and reporting solutions.

An in-depth study of rewarded video, an in-game video ad that offers a game-related boost after players have watched the full ad, also features. Emerging as an effective, accessible ad format to reach the casual gaming audience, rewarded video creates positive brand associations by offering an important value exchange, an advertising feature predicted to play an increasingly major role in successful campaigns as more immersive digital experiences evolve.

“We are seeing an increasing number of brands leveraging the potential of casual gaming advertising to reach a diverse, highly engaged audience,” said Shira Leffel, Executive Director Marketing & Product Education at smartclip. “Casual gaming advertising — particularly rewarded video — offers a powerful, brand-safe, and effective way to reach myriad target customers, delivering high viewability rates of 98% and high view-through rates averaging at 94%. Our aim with this new paper is to encourage a deeper understanding of gaming, gamers, and gaming advertising, and to ensure this vibrant, growing market is as accessible as possible for all advertisers.”

Key points covered include:

• Gaming overview: How gaming and gamers have changed and diversified, insight into gaming advertising and ad formats available
• Casual gaming overview: Defining casual gaming, who casual gamers are and why they play, outlining the advertising opportunities and ad types available
• The rewarded video opportunity: Defining rewarded video ads and exploring their effectiveness, the rewards for advertisers, the KPIs, and the targeting, measurement, and verification capabilities available
• Misconceptions: A closer look at common gaming misconceptions and stereotypes
• Industry opinions: Exclusive contributions from key industry executives on their gaming advertising experiences, including Gameloft, IronSource, and media plan GmbH
• Real-world data: Exclusive smartclip data gathered from the smartx platform and targeting partner emetriq 
• Key learnings: Translating findings into key takeaway information for advertisers and agencies

Download now: ‘Game On: Engaging the Ever-Growing Casual Gaming Audience with Rewarded Video Ads’

smartclip

smartclip is the adtech development unit of RTL Group — Europe’s leading free-to-air broadcaster group. Our proprietary advertising technology is custom-built for the needs of European broadcasters and publishers — enabling media owners to implement smarter monetisation strategies. We are committed to delivering the most innovative video ad experiences spanning in-stream, out-stream, connected TV, addressable TV, and gaming — ultimately empowering brands with true cross-screen storytelling opportunities on all devices. The media sales division of smartclip will merge with RTL AdConnect and G+J i|MS to form RTL AdAlliance, an international advertising and technology sales champion. Once the merger is complete, smartclip will focus strictly on technology development.

Headquartered in Hamburg, smartclip has offices in Berlin, Munich, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Gütersloh, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Milan, and Rome. 

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