Gametech needs to address longstanding advertiser concerns to succeed, says iion CCO
iion’s new chief commercial officer, Yun Yip, has told Mumbrella that for the game advertising ecosystem to develop further, the long-standing concerns from advertisers such as brand safety, fraud, audience and measurability need to be addressed with education efforts.
The Australian-founded company has flagged its intention for rapid APAC expansion with the appointment of former Foxcatcher and MediaMath executive Yip, who will oversee both the demand generation and the marketing function of iion.
Yip
“I think there is a need for all of us, within the gaming industry and gametech ecosystem, to call out how gaming in itself is a channel,” she said. “It’s not just – I am going to plan and buy a channel – and I’ll slice out a part for gaming.”
“Because when you think about how gamers actually engage and what their behaviours are like when they are playing a game, it’s something completely different.”
From a marketing standpoint for iion, Yip said the thought leadership on these issues are also really important.
“I personally see that we can work with everyone, because we are purely a platform that allows people to choose where, when and how they want to buy gaming,” she said. “How another gaming partner or how another gaming business may view us, I think, is up to their interpretation.”
“For example, I know that there are a few DSPs out there who say that they have a gaming strategy.
“But a gaming strategy that is only at a supply level or being able to plug into a few different publishers, or supply sources – that’s very different to having a technology that’s purely built to help advertisers and publishers monetise and advertise.
“Working really closely with our tech and agency partners, there’s a lot around the education piece and being in the offices with them and helping them have the best campaigns when they need to, but also setting our sales team to be able to help with that, too.
“The education piece does lead a lot into the sales as well as the marketing side.”
iion’s co-founder, Sanjaya Molligoda, was upbeat about the potential in the market for the business.
Molligoda
“Most of these other companies who work in the gaming space sign these certain parts of the gaming environment. No one has a holistic platform in one place,” said Molligoda.
This was in reference to iion’s self-serve advertising platform, ‘immersiion’, which allows advertisers to build, test, serve and measure their campaigns across various gaming platforms and environments.
In terms of what iion’s competitive position in the market is, Molligoda said he would like to think it’s something like: “Facebook is for social, at least in its initial days. Google is for search, and iion is for gaming.”
iion is currently in conversation with a few agency partners in Australia and New Zealand. Beyond the big four holding companies, they include Scroll Media and TotallyAwesome, the latter of which is a multi-region partnership.
Yip said one of these partnerships was signed on within weeks of her starting, and more case studies will come out in the next six to eight weeks.
“Our vision is for the whole gaming ecosystem to grow, so you will hear us talking a lot about working with publishers, working with agencies, working with other gaming experts out there,” she said.
“Because I think, for our vision to come true, their vision will also need to be part of it, too.”
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I’d prefer it if advertisers addressed tech and user’s concerns for once. It would appear, as always, that people have this whole deal backwards. Brands are a guest in users’ space. Users are not a guest in the Brands space. How many times does this need to be repeated?
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