Will video ads finally appear on PC and console games?
If you are playing a mobile game, you should not be surprised by the built-in video ads. These advertisements often have a feature, that is, after the player has finished watching them, they can get some props or a chance to resurrect, thus allowing the players to be patient and watch the advertisements. In the near future, we may see this kind of video ads appear on PC and console platform games.
“THE WORLD OF EA GAMES & DEADSPACE” by Ben Templesmith is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
According to Axios, EA (Electronic Arts) has reached an agreement with an advertising technology company that in the future, it may use a new platform to implant video ads in its games. This new advertising platform is called playerWON, which is developed and owned by the company Simulmedia. Game developers can use this platform to embed video ads into the game and decide what rewards players can get after watching these ads, which can be in-game currency or items such as skins. Simulmedia’s ad server can know in real-time whether the player has watched an ad video completely. After the player has watched it, the server will send a notification to the developer indicating that rewards can be issued.
According to the market research results of Simulmedia, in the early testing phase of this platform, players will be more willing to play and spend money on a game if they can get rewards by watching ads in the game. And each player can accept up to 10 ads of 15 to 30 seconds per day on average.
This way of advertising is basically a must-have for mobile game developers, but for console and PC game developers, it has not been implemented for a long time. Because they worry that it will affect the player’s experience and engagement. However, as more and more major manufacturers express that they will invest more research and development resources in Free to play games, it is only a matter of time before such video ads appear on PC and console games. When video ads appear, then the business model of mobile games will inevitably be spread on PC and console games.
