fortnite

Google’s search antitrust trial ends with a whimper; the pitfalls of agency-owned SSPs; Perplexity axes its ads business; and brands are still building big-ticket metaverse experiences.

As premium game prices skyrocket and paid subscriptions and cloud-based gaming services take off, marketers sense a chance to defray rising costs with ad revenue – perhaps dispelling some doubts about the value of more ads in games.

While advertisers’ interest in gaming may be growing, their spending commitments seem stuck on pause, judging by Tuesday’s IAB PlayFronts event.

The in-game advertising market’s stagnation is both unsurprising and frustrating. The onus is on the gaming industry to make gaming an essential channel for advertisers, rather than a nice-to-have.

Ally’s newest Fortnite game, “Tee Time Speedrun,” launched last week to promote its sponsorship of the USGA and LGPA. The game ties into Ally’s goal of reaching gender parity in its sports sponsorships.

SuperAwesome CEO Kate O’Loughlin discusses how contextual targeting makes it less risky for brands to market to kids and teens, and whether advertiser priorities for reaching young consumers are shifting after years of metaverse hype.

The vast majority of advertisers who buy ads in video games (91%) no longer consider gaming to be an experimental media channel. But ad spend in games still lags behind audience engagement.

In today’s newsletter: Users’ rare anime collections disappear as Sony consolidates Funimation and Crunchyroll; Instagram and Threads stop promoting political content; and why Fortnite is winning the metaverse.

In today’s newsletter: Buyers are relatively blasé about made-for-advertising sites; Meta is riding high, having fully adapted to ATT, while Google’s search dominance is under threat; and Publicis Groupe reports strong growth.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Pining For AI Google laid off nearly 1,000 employees last week – but the hits keep coming. It’s also scrapping hundreds of jobs in its ad sales division, Business Insider reports. The headcount reduction is a byproduct of restructuring its ad sales team, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. A Win Is A Win? Blue-chip accounts are coveted on Madison Ave, but it’s impossible to tell which clients are really the key wins for the agencies involved.  Winning the McDonald’s or Coca-Cola account comes with cachet and solid earned media, but the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Google Gripe Google is refunding agencies for “billing discrepancies,” aka ads that ran in places where they weren’t supposed to, Ad Age reports. The refunds (which Google refers to as credits) closely follow the viral Adalytics report alleging that YouTube placed TrueView ad […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Point Of No Return Amazon set the bar with its liberal refund policy – it’s quick to credit consumers for missing or unsatisfactory items – and one- or two-day shipping. Matching Amazon’s standards is a brutally expensive challenge for retailers, who must […]

While American gamers are more open to in-game ads than many believe, any such activations must bear the hallmarks of creative and technical excellence.

In 2022, top players in digital advertising finally started taking gaming seriously, and the groundwork was laid for programmatic in-game advertising to grow thanks to a long overdue update to the IAB’s and MRC’s in-game ad standards. The scene is also set for in-game advertising to expand into console gaming, and we might even see the debut of the first sell-side platform dedicated to gaming.

For the most part, metaverse early adopters say they’re just exploring the possibilities rather than trying to really demonstrate ROI. And while hugely popular online games like Roblox and Fortnite are lumped in with metaverse platforms, they’re really Web 2.0 gaming without the decentralized interoperability promised by Web 3.0 and blockchain technology. The few actual metaverse environments in market, such as Decentraland and The Sandbox, don’t offer the audience reach advertisers crave.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The “Go” In Google There are two important privacy issues at the top of EU regulator agendas right now: a GDPR case against IAB Europe and Schrems II cases targeting Google Analytics.  On the one hand, IAB Europe supporters seem heartened, counterintuitively, after […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Bouncing Back The virtual Upfronts have concluded; the celebrities have bounced; the guest DJs are spinning on Brooklyn rooftops. And the time has come for advertisers to commit. The broadcast industry wants to know whether flashy presentations by Disney, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, WarnerMedia and others […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Tim Talks Move over Epic, it’s Tim’s turn. The Apple CEO had his say in federal court on Friday as part of a lawsuit Epic filed after its hugely popular game Fortnite was removed from the App Store last year for flouting Apple’s requirement […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Swan Song? Telcos rushed headlong into the ad tech business, but will they survive it? Verizon washed its hands of ad tech with the sale of Verizon Media to Apollo; And Xandr is in limbo following AT&T’s mega-spinoff of WarnerMedia. But three’s a trend. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Tim’s Turn Apple CEO Tim Cook will soon testify in the company’s lawsuit with Epic Games. Epic sued after its hugely popular game Fortnite was kicked out of the App Store last year for flouting Apple’s 30% cut of in-game revenues. Epic claimed that […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Playing It Safe Who needs the razzle dazzle? There’s nothing sexier than safety and incremental reach, and Twitter touted both during its NewFronts presentation on Wednesday. “The TV-like quality of the content is clear,” said JP Maheu, Twitter’s VP of US client services. To […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. News Deals Google may have threatened to leave Australia if the government forced tech platforms to pay for news, but the search giant is suddenly showering money on its most demanding critics. The New York Times reports that Google – the dominant search engine […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Halves Not Apple is about to make a lot of smaller developers happy. Starting next year, Apple will lower its commission from 30% to 15% on sales for developers that generate less than $1 million in revenue through the App Store, including on […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. After Nov. 3 Google will block political ads after polls close on Election Day to avoid confusion during an expected delay in results, the company told advertisers Friday. Any election-related ads running through Google’s ad-serving platforms will be banned, as will ads that target election-related search […]

Facebook launched a new feature on Friday that will allow small businesses to promote, host and monetize live online events on its platform – and took aim at Apple in the process. The paid online events feature, which will initially be available in the United States and 19 other countries, enables anyone with a monetizable […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Agency Woes Dentsu is yet another agency group that didn’t have a pretty Q2, as organic revenues declined 17.3% to $166 million. International arm Dentsu Aegis Network dragged down the group as organic revenue declined 20% to $100 million, compared to a 12% drop […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Ducks In A Row The US Justice Department’s antitrust investigation of Google is coming to a close. By the end of July, the DOJ seeks to have final documents and data from competitors that have allegedly been hurt by Google’s dominance in online advertising, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Copyright Or Wrong Google’s content removal system is being gamed by bad actors to remove legitimate news stories that are damaging to companies’ and individuals’ reputations. The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act stipulates that online content aggregators aren’t responsible for copyright violations as long […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Let Me Be Upfront Advertisers are pressing networks to delay upfront negotiations until September or October, when they’ll have a sense of how programming is being watched right now and (hopefully) can forecast their finances. Some brands are eager to buy ad space right […]