Gaming is Eating (and monetizing) the World
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In 2012 when I founded LJH Marketing, I never imagined I would be writing today about the tectonic shift in the media and entertainment industries where gaming is eating the world.
The 2010s were a heady time for social media and the golden age of the influencer. Kim Kardashian had just joined Instagram, which itself had just been absorbed into Facebook. I was in my junior year of high school in Paris. Sensing a massive opportunity to capitalize on this, I helped brands such as MAC Cosmetics, French entertainment channel NRJ, and French beauty retailer Marionnaud, navigate influencer marketing and run online influencer activation events for Gen Z. I firsthand experienced the Golden Age of the Influencer. Brands were hungry to pay for digital affirmation and relevance, influencers were becoming common, and users were spending more and more time on Instagram and YouTube.
Fast forward to today and Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are the oligopoly of social media but are declining in cultural relevance. Gaming of all types is becoming the new social graph of society. Gaming is eating the world: almost 40% of American teens of all genders spend more time playing games than on social media. This was unthinkable just a few years ago.
Now based in Los Angeles, the media and gaming capital of the world, I’m excited to announce I’m launching an ad platform and network to meet the changing needs of brands and developers.
Put simply, Tempo Network is:
1. For developers, a plug-in enabling automatic integration of advanced product placements into games (think Coca Cola coins to collect in an endless runner, a burger from the local burger shop to feed a character, or a Garmin branded GPS device for an open world game map). Tempo boosts the time advertisements are on screen, as a percent of game time, without harming the user experience.
2. For brands, an effortless platform to integrate their product into games without needing to make deals with individual developers. Tempo automatically places a call to action element inside games enabling seamless conversions.
Take a look at Tempo’s Heinz Ad for mobile game Perfect Cream:
We firmly believe that brands must adjust their advertising strategy to remain relevant in the coming decade, especially in a post-COVID-19 era. At the same time, developers need new strategies to monetize virtual worlds in the face of upward pressure to monetize earlier in the startup lifecycle, and increased user negativity towards traditional ad formats.
Tempo is well positioned for the current COVID19 time and the post pandemic world. A new topology of psychological and emotional needs is forming as people find ways to be alone together — users are becoming more exposed, authentic, and integrated within the apps we consume daily. Tempo is bridging the gap and enabling this new generation of apps to monetize. We are built upon trends which were brewing before the crisis but are seeing significantly accelerated adoption as a result of it.
Furthermore, users are becoming increasingly weary of ads causing turbulence in the current monetization methods.
- 82% of Gen Z skip mobile ads when possible, or swipe to another app
- 50%+ of youth use mobile ad blockers and tune out of forced ads
- 75% of youth want to engage with brands but find brands unrelatable
Our mission is to connect brands and developers around the globe by creating an ad-network that enables brands to reach and engage with new demographics through in-game ad campaigns.
We look forward to working with innovative brands and developers as we build Tempo.
Anne-Lise
- Results and statistics come from the study ‘Ad Reaction’ conducted by Millward Brown
