With every new plot planted and zombie zapped to bits, the online games industry is changing the way we interact with entertainment. Online games publishers work with us to grow their gaming empires across all screens, from distribution and downloads through to in-game advertising. We’ve also recognized a growing advertiser demand to reach highly engaged games audiences. So we were especially excited to announce two launches at Europe’s Game Developer Conference: we’re launching the TrueView video ad format across our games monetization platforms, and opening up the DoubleClick Ad Exchange to monetize desktop games.

TrueView creates a better ad experience for gamers, and higher monetization for publishers

We all know how important it is to create a gamer-friendly ad experience, which is why we’re bringing one of our most successful ad formats to games: the skippable video ad. TrueView Instream skippable video ads drive a lot of advertiser demand on YouTube, the Ad Exchange, and AdSense for video. Following on Susan Wojcicki’s beta announcement earlier this year, we’re now making TrueView video ads available to all games publishers on AdX, AdSense for games, and select mobile publishers on AdMob. During the beta, we found that TrueView video ads contributed to lower abandonment rates and greater monetization compared to normal instream video ads.

The Ad Exchange posts a new high score with desktop in-game ads

Programmatic channels have revolutionized the way we buy and sell online advertising - and now the launch of in-game ads on the Ad Exchange gives developers the same sophisticated platform to accelerate their monetization efforts. Publishers who have desktop Flash and HTML5 games can now access the global advertiser demand, top-performing ad formats, and finely-tuned controls offered by the Ad Exchange. Advertisers can now specifically target online games’ highly engaged audiences with wide range of gamer-friendly ad formats. These include image and text overlays and interstitials, right through to standard video ads and the skippable TrueView video ad format.

We think that opening the programmatic channel and the rise of gamer-friendly ad formats like TrueView will drive even better monetization for games - which is great news for game publishers, but perhaps not for the zombies.

Posted by
Rebecca Illowsky and Allen Huang
Product Managers, Games Monetization