WM Interactive’s advertisement design and development services bring highly engaging game-like ads to apps, websites, and more.
Mobile devices started displaying traditional ad banners in 2007. Although this was a huge breakthrough at the time, users got accustomed to seeing ads on their applications over the next several years. This led to a decrease in ad engagement, performance, and ROI for companies reliant on mobile advertising. After many years of ad banners, users started to experience a phenomenon called ad blindness. Ad blindness is when users of an app or website consciously or subconsciously ignore any banner-like information that is displayed on their screens. The impact of ad blindness has been compounded in recent years by the mass-adoption of ad-blocking technologies, which has nearly destroyed digital ad effectiveness on desktop devices. Agencies had to restrategize their marketing campaigns because their dollars were not as effective as they used to be. Since 2018, U.S. traditional ad banner spending has dropped nearly 8% totaling over $9 billion. This trend will continue as ad banner spending continues to drop through 2022. It’s clear that traditional ad banners are dying.
Incentifying engagement
Marketers and app developers have countered the ineffectiveness of traditional ad banners by incentivizing interactions with traditional ads. This new approach entices users to interact with the ad and the products or services within in exchange for rewards. Some games give users in-app credits if they watch an ad, download another app, purchase a product, or share with friends. While this has shown to be effective in increasing interactions with more traditional ad types, the value of the conversions simply don’t hold up, as the intention of the user is rarely to engage with the app. They are watching, clicking, and downloading simply to fulfill a goal from their original game. Not because they want to. While this method certainly bumps the engagement numbers, more and more advertisers are finding horrible ROI and disinterested audiences. This model is not long for this world.
The Future: Ads that Audiences Want to Interact With
A new form of advertising has been revolutionizing the industry and is seeing unprecedented returns: Interactive ads in the form of playable experiences that allow users to engage with the brand in exciting, memorable, and sharable ways.
in 2018 Unity Engine worked with WM Interactive to demonstrate the future of playable game ads. By creating lightweight HTML5 game engines that load instantly from an ad banner, the new technology allows players to sample slices of games before they download. This caters to ever-shortening attention spans, actively qualifies audiences, and collects a wealth of metrics (user registrations). It’s a revolutionary approach to digital ads that reduces costs and turns annoying ad banners into value-added experiences for the consumer. For the advertiser, it provides tighter targeting, more insights into the user’s response to an ad, and almost instantly puts a sample of the full products into the player’s hands. From games to product demos, this model is not only taking the advertising industry by storm, it has exploded on social outlets proving it as a way to get a campaign noticed organically.
Branded games in the form of familiar and easily-accessible titles (like Candy Crush or Panda Pop) gives audiences an appealing and relatable way to interact with a brand they would otherwise ignore in a traditional banner. It also challenges them to deepen their engagement with progression, unlockables, product education, and rewards for sticking with it. Ad-games can passively inform audiences of product features, availability, sales, and helps drive home brand recognition. It can also tie in discounts into the campaign by offering coupon codes as in-game rewards, for signing in with e-mail/social accounts, or for sharing the experience with others. These are levels of engagement that are simply not approachable with a simple ad banner.
All New Metrics
The possibilities of using interactive ads are vast in comparison to traditional ads. Interactive ads can increase the time users spent on ads by as much as 47% in comparison to traditional ad banners. The more time users interact, the more insight advertisers have. How long the ad was watched, if the user replayed it, how far they progressed, who they shared it with, and what features (such as colors, designs, products) they favored most. This allows marketers and businesses to review their campaigns and retarget their audiences to improve their ROI. The simple metrics of CPM and CPC are things of the past. It has now become, how they interact with an ad, what they learned and liked when they converted, how they shared their experience, and how to reach them next time.
Virtual Experiences Dominate
Interactive ads in the form of AR and VR provide cutting-edge socially-sharable opportunities to propagate an advertiser’s message. AR and VR interactive ads not only leverage their specific technologies to immerse the user and enhance their experience, but also have a lasting impact on users (70% more memorable than traditional ads). They drive tangible results for marketers like increases in views, engagement, and conversions. With these high-tech interactive ads, users are able to interact with brands and products on a level unprecedented in digital advertising. AR-driven product interactions are some of the most talked-about and shared campaigns of the last 5 years. While the new technologies seem complex, a simple AR experience can be driven instantly from a banner ad, within an existing app, or launched from printed material, and easily viewed and shared from millions of devices using a simple web browser.
WM Interactive: Branded Interactive experiences for over a decade.
WMI is not only a leader in cutting-edge branded interactive experiences, we are leaders in HTML5 development (a technology critical to mass-adoption). From simple HTML5 games and apps to 3D Augmental Reality and Social Experiences, we work with advertisers to develop lightweight fast-loading web experiences that run on any device, work with the vast landscape advertising platforms, and appeal to a wide-range of audiences. Our high-performance, supremely creative approach ensures that users not only remember the experience, but are also driven to engage with it over and over again.
WM Interactive specializes in several forms of interactive advertising. This includes:
- AR and VR experiences: The possibilities for AR and VR experiences are endless, and often tear down the barriers traditional ads put up long ago. 3D animated ads, product demonstrations, immersive games, scavenger hunts, point of sale enhancements, virtual tours, portals to new environments, and more. These ads help immerse the user in the ad and maximize the amount of time they spend on it and this results in better click-through and conversion rates. Social sharability is through the roof!
- Instant Games: Instant games are mini-games that are presented to the user during an ad. They are so fun and value-added, that many users find them to be a blast and barely acknowledge it as an advertisement at all These games can be a preview slice of the full game being promoted or a branded game to advertise any product or service. Check out our portfolio to see all the branded games we have made in the past.
- Fun Quizzes and Surveys: Quizzes and surveys are one of the best ways to grab casual users’ attention. They are an easy method to not only survey users, but educate them along the way. From multimedia trivia to personality quizzes, we specialize in creating entertaining quizzes that users enjoy and want to share.
- Social Games and Interaction: Social-based ads allow audiences to connect and share their experience, expanding ROI organically. We can thoughtfully integrate social sharing and interaction into a variety of games and ad types. Location-based and messenger games and apps (that run inside Facebook messenger and Snapchat) are some of the best ways to reach new fans and propagate through their friend’s networks.
Digital ads are in danger of being dismissed and aggressively blocked by the majority of users. The primary cause of this stems from disdain for the lack of value of the ads served for the annoyance users perceive when loading them. If we increase that value with lightweight, entertaining, and memorable experiences, we have a chance at turning the industry around and setting it off in a new and exciting direction that connects advertisers to the audience in unprecedented ways. WM Interactive is ready to create these experiences for you. Contact us today to get started.
