"Advertisers are having a tough time understanding ad performance in video games"

Gaming with an audience of 3.1 billion and revenues approaching $175 billion is becoming an attractive media channel. According to data from Omdia, the in-game ad revenue is expected to increase from $42.3 billion in 2019 to $56 billion in 2024. Mobile has greatly contributed to the growth of the gaming industry and has 50% share of the market.

As gaming comes to its own as a media channel, questions regarding brand safety, Return on Investment, ad fraud, performance and impact inevitably become a part of the conversation. Oracle Advertising has updated the Oracle Moat measurement and marketing analytics suite to include solutions for in-game ad measurement. The company is working with leading in-game advertisers like Anzu, Bidstack, Adverty, and Frameplay.

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Oracle’s measurement technology looks at 3D in-game environments and enables advertisers to effectively measure impressions and GIVT to determine whether an ad was served to a human and to avoid ad spend on invalid traffic or fraudulent activity. The measurement suite includes solutions for ad verification, attention, brand safety, advertising effectiveness, and cross-platform reach and frequency.

In conversation with Adgully, Rakesh Jaitly, Senior Sales Director - Oracle Applications, speaks about the challenges in in-game ad measurement and the scope of in-game advertising in India.

What kind of challenges are marketers facing in ad measurement?

The biggest threat that advertisers are dealing with today is advertising fraud as they are constantly engaging with new audiences. Oracle Moat, part of Oracle Advertising, is tackling this by effectively measuring impressions and GIVT to regulate whether an ad was served to a genuine provider/ human and this will help in avoiding ad spend on malicious traffic or sham activity. Additionally, it builds trust and assists advertisers to make informed decisions and they can accordingly make wise investments and more than that better protect ad spend. Oracle is working with leading brands, agencies, publishers, and platforms to resolve their biggest media measurement issues spanning across digital and TV. The advanced measurement suite from Oracle Moat provides solutions for ad verification, attention, brand safety, advertising effectiveness, and cross-platform reach and frequency.

What is the role and adoption of gaming in India?

In the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, marketers saw a shift in media and entertainment consumption trends and technology is the biggest differentiator around this. According to Deloitte India report, the Gaming industry is expected to reach $2.8 billion by 2022 and will contribute around 5% to Media and Entertainment's market share. The growth is largely going to be driven by the new trends, that is, edge computing, IoT, AI, AR/VR, etc., that are impacting businesses and consumers across the globe and in India.

As per KPMG, the rapid change in the consumption of gaming and digital media is projecting global growth bouncing up to 33% to reach $25.4 billion in 2021. The ability to play a video game online on any new-age computing device offers better immersive experience to users and it has come across from the last lockdown that time spent on gaming had increased by 21%. India, one of the top five mobile gaming markets in the world, with a 13% share of global game sessions, is expected to add 40 million online gamers during 2020−22. However, marketers and advertisers are having a tough time in understanding advertising performance in video games, hence Oracle has come up with the world’s first ad measurement technology for 3D in-game environments. With the new Oracle Advertising capabilities, advertisers will be able to enable their business using AI to measure ad impressions and invalid traffic across 3D surfaces within gaming environments.