Creating an In-Game Ad Campaign: 5 Tips From Eskimi Experts

With more than 3 billion people playing games on various platforms, gaming today is the most prominent entertainment form. But, for advertisers, this is not just an exciting new channel. It is the channel to find gamer key demographic - millennial men. 

They are like a holy grail of marketing, hard to find but loyal when captured in the funnel. And they are hard to find on any other marketing channel easily. Just think about it. They are all playing games after work with their friends. Some started playing during the pandemic, and others were there for a long time.

On the other hand, gaming is not a male-dominated form of entertainment, and it is quite easy to find very diverse groups of people if you understand the latest trends in marketing. There are gaming veterans, new generations of gamers, and in some areas of the world numbers of female and male gamers is almost equal.

Luckily for you, Eskimi has a team of people who are already experienced in creating in-game advertising campaigns. They know the best tips and tricks, and they love sharing their tips with our customers. After all, we have the same goal here - the best performance of ads. 

Stay simple with the branding of in-game ads

As you already know, the main difference between traditional ads in games and in-gaming ads is that in-gaming ads are blended with the surroundings of the game. Therefore, they are not affecting the gaming experience and don't interrupt the flow of the game. 

So the main advice from our team for the visual part of the ad is to create simple banners and videos. Try playing with fewer words and bigger fonts. Your copywriters can think of a short phrase that can be in the background of any game. Don't overthink the small design details. 

Short-form copy, simple formats like gif, jpg, or png, and you are good to go.

Here are some examples below of blended display ads and blended video ads.

Keep it short when it comes to advertising videos

The official requirement for the length of a programmatic in-game ad is up to 30 sec. However, the Eskimi team recommends that video duration is below 6-10 seconds. The reason for this is that there are very dynamic games. Therefore, if you create longer videos, you will not be sure that gamers will see the whole message within the video. 

It is good to know that in-game advertising supports 30 frames per second or less. You need a regular mp4 format of the video. The supported video layout can be horizontal and vertical and recommended aspect ratios are: 16:9, 4:3, 9:16, and 3:4.

Keep in mind that you will get more detailed information from our customer support team and that each game has its own advertising rules. 

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Take high frequency in-game as an advantage

Clients who have experience with regular programmatic ads insist on the low frequency of ads to reach more audiences in awareness campaigns. However, the situation is different when placing your ads in an in-game environment. 

Firstly, there are a lot of games out there, and not all of them are yet available for in-game advertising. Secondly, your audience is paying more attention to the game. In this environment, it is not enough to see ads two times per week if gamers spend an enormous amount of time on their favorite platforms.

That is why the frequency in in-game campaigns is not your enemy. On the contrary, gamers can remember your slogan and logo better while enjoying their favorite games.

Retarget, and brand lift with programmatic in-game advertising

As you know, retargeting campaigns are crucial when you want to increase brand awareness and conversions. They are essential to bring first-time visitors to your website back to it and complete the purchase. When your future customers see your ads in more than one advertising channel, your brand becomes recognizable. Eventually, it increases trust between you and your customer, and you can even get returning customers with retargeting.

So if you decide to run your in-game advertising campaign, you will be able to retarget all people who saw in-game ads. 

With programmatic in-game advertising, you can measure the success of your campaigns with brand lift. Questions from the brand lift study can help you understand in real-time, what is the effect of your in-game campaign. 

Use the power of untapped market 

Last but not least important is that at the moment, Google and Facebook are still not offering in-game inventory to their ad buyers. However, it doesn't mean that it will stay that way, with big companies investing more and more into the gaming industry. 

Suppose you decide to invest in programmatic in-game advertising. In that case, you won't have to deal with competitors from Facebook and Google platforms that usually make your ads more expensive. So, don't hesitate to explore the possibilities of programmatic in-game advertising while it is still an untapped market.

Got any other questions about in-game advertising? 

Don't forget that you can send us additional questions via our social media profiles and that you can contact us anytime through our website.
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Our customer service is ready to answer all the questions you have about in-game advertising and the general programmatic advertising questions.