Adobe: Virtual And Augmented Reality Buzz Far Surpass Retail Sales

According to a new report from Adobe Digital Insights (ADI), US gaming console and PC sales will reach $25.3 billion in 2016, up 7.7 percent over 2015, and represent a growing opportunity for marketers. Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst and director for ADI, said online revenue was up 42 percent in Q1 2016 over the same quarter last year. Gaffney forecasts online game sales in the US will generate $1.1 billion in revenue this year.

“Q1 is traditionally a slow time of year in the games industry,” Gaffney said. “We’re seeing a transition of more money being spent in online gaming, which is why we saw offline game sales down 7.7 percent compared to Q1 2015.”

ADI was established four years ago. Gaffney was placed in charge of the new division, which analyzes information in the Adobe marketing cloud. For this new gaming report, Gaffney and her team analyzed data from 2.5 billion visits to retail websites, providing a much deeper dive into data by looking specific transactions this year. They were able to capture details in online shopping carts such as product name, price and quantity, and if it was purchased. They analyzed 2.2 million products overall through online shopping cart data, including 8,000 in the computer space and 4,000 in the gaming space.

Virtual reality was also a focus of the ADI 2016 Gaming Report. Gaffney said to date, the buzz around VR has far outweighed retail sales. In fact, retail sales weren’t robust enough to even include in the data-driven report.

“The VR headset marketplace hasn’t taken off yet,” Gaffney said. “We’ll track it once it takes off, which we expect to happen around Christmastime (2016).”

Adobe Social View is a scraping agent that goes into social platforms to collect the number of mentions with keywords around the virtual reality space. Gaffney’s team has been doing this every month for over a year. She said social media buzz is very predictive of what will happen in the future when it comes to retail sales.

“The big buzz around VR started with the Oculus Rift announcement, and when it started shipping we saw a 548 percent increase since January 2015,” Gaffney said. “And we’re not seeing much decline. VR is holding that excitement, especially the HTC Vive, which has seen an over 2,000 percent increase since January 2015.”

Gaffney said the sustained excitement is because different devices are coming out. But that’s not translating to a lot of sales.

“Right now the market is early adopters who want to try all the new stuff, while others are waiting,” Gaffney said.

Gaffney believes Facebook owning Oculus may be preventing the VR platform from making partnerships across the games business, which gives HTC, which is more independent and has its own partnership with Valve, an edge up in the PC VR competition.

Both Oculus and HTC face the major hurdle of the price of PC hardware, according to Gaffney. While the cost of PCs that can run high-end VR remains high, this opens up a door for Sony.

“PlayStation is different because they have 40 million consoles in homes and it’s easy to upgrade to PlayStation VR,” Gaffney said. But there are still a lot of question marks in the VR market.

“Maybe the HTC won’t be the thing, maybe Samsung will come out with something at Christmas that knocks everyone out,” Gaffney said. “What new thing will come out that consumers will want? That’s the game we’ll get into with augmented reality.”

Another growing area in the video game industry is eSports, which has impacted every sector of gaming to date. ADI looked at the growth of eSports communities across top games and found that Valve’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) saw a 66 percent increase, topping all five games. Valve’s Dota 2 saw a 17 percent increase, Riot Games’ League of Legends saw a 9 percent rise, Blizzard Entertainment’s Hearthstone saw an 8 percent growth and Activision’s Call of Duty saw a 1 percent rise.

Gaffney believes that in the future, VR and eSports will go together like peanut butter and jelly.

One key takeaway from this new report for brands is that gamers like to test things out before buying. ADI explored online games that featured open betas and found that games that allowed players to test the product during development sold 4.2x more units than games that didn’t have open betas.

“Millennials don’t react well to closed environments,” Gaffney said. “They like openness and the ability for friends to be on something with them, sharing the experience.”

Gaffney believes it might pay off for those in the software and technology industry to allow potential customers to test technology before it is released to the masses. That could even apply to an advertising campaign.

“Think of all the useful feedback gaming companies get when they have open betas for their games; now think about how much a brand could benefit from that type of feedback when launching a product, service or campaign to ensure it really resonates with the audience,” Gaffney said.

How HTC Is Leveraging Viveport For Non-Gaming Virtual Reality Experiences

In a move designed to empower developers to drive long-term engagement with customers and accelerate the support of virtual reality around the world, HTC will be launching Viveport this fall, it’s new global app store dedicated solely to VR.

HTC wants to democratize access to experiences where anyone can learn anything, travel anywhere and experience anything imaginable via Viveport by featuring a fast-growing selection of apps and experiences across education, design, art, social, video, music, sports, health, fashion, travel, news, shopping, creativity tools and more. Viveport will amp up the non-gaming VR content pipeline and complement the SteamVR platform, which is predominantly geared toward gaming-related apps.

The Viveport store—slated to be available in Vive headsets, web browsers and as a PC and mobile app—will feature pay-to-download, in-app-purchases, subscriptions and other revenue-generating opportunities.

Rikard Steiber, formerly Google’s global marketing director of mobile and social advertising, is now plying his trade as a senior vice president of virtual reality for HTC managing the global Viveport VR app store business, and mentoring Vive X companies. He joined [a]listdaily to explain why VR will be the next big computing platform.

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Rikard Steiber

Why was it so important for HTC to focus on building business in verticals outside of gaming?

We believe VR will change the world for consumers and business alike. We want to make VR available for everyone. I think the initial content has been focusing on games and entertainment, so it’s become widely available. What we want to do now is help all the other developers and creators to reach out globally with their content and build a business. But at the same time, we’ve seen users creatively teaching via video to businesses and brands. We also want to figure out how can we engage with VR. This gives them a good platform to find that content and then find the new uses, which also makes VR more accessible and relevant to everyone.

What are the interesting opportunities VR has for business applications?

What’s interesting is that when people put on an HTC Vive headset, they get this religious experience. It doesn’t matter if they’re a teacher or an artist or a doctor or an engineer. Suddenly they say, ‘ok, I can teach how to do medical procedures in VR, and it’s less risky,’ or ‘I can make complex engineering together with my colleagues,’ or ‘I can teach my kids in a much more immersive way.’ I don’t think that we have understood all the applications yet, but I can see when we talk to people that their eyes light up and they can see all these new applications for pretty much any industry project. What we learned is that any new computing platform that’s coming, whether its PC, web or mobile, it all starts with communication and entertainment gaming services. But it wasn’t games that made PC, web and mobile big. I think now with VR, it’s starting with the early adopters, but essentially it’s going to be these new categories around experiences of education, or creativity, software, social media, video and also brands of commerce. That’s what it’s going to be when it hits mainstream.

What is your favorite non-gaming VR application that you’d like to see more content being produced for?

I have two girls, ages 6 and 10, so our job as parents is very much to keep them excited and motivated about school—they can now explore. If you can immerse yourself, if you can walk with the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and then have your teacher tell you about the T-Rex or the stegosaurus, that’s going to be a more immersive and memorable experience that they’ll never forget in their life. If we can get them excited about geography, or mathematics, or all these other topics and actually remember it better, that’s very powerful.

ViveportPoster3

How would you assess the current VR scene across the globe?

I think it’s interesting—creativity comes from everywhere. I think the US is a very strong market in a way. I think there are very strong markets in Japan and China. There’s a lot of creativity across all markets. What we want to do with HTC Vive is help users find all this great content out there because it’s kind of hard to find them directly.

What are some challenges HTC Vive will have to overcome to be a leader in this industry?

We’re focusing on helping the developers, creators and brands to reach out with their VR experiences and build a business. At the same time, we focus on a lot of user experience. We try to ensure the best experience, like where rooms can move around and interact with objects, and also make that experience available to everyone. That’s sort of both sides of it, having great content and having the technology to make something available to everyone.

What is the most organic way for brands to use VR?

If you think about brands today, they’re all doing content and content marketing. I think it’s a great opportunity for brands to be innovative and to embrace this technology because many big corporations were probably skeptical at the beginning of computers, or even the web, or even mobile. Now of course, they’re living their lives on their applications or services and training in computers. I think for an enterprise, it’s not just engaging with consumers, but collaborative working in the company—it’s going to be training. There’s going to be so many functions of the corporation that’s going to be able to take advantage of VR technology. There are three things really important for brands. First of all, if you want to have a brand experience, this is the most immersive experience you can have. Second is education—VR makes it much more memorable because you’re going to interact with it. Your recall from VR is going to be much higher than looking at a print or banner ad, or whatever you’re doing today. Third, if you actually touch an object on a shelf, you’re much more likely to pay for it. If you just imagine touching a product, you’re much more likely to make a purchase. Brands can build relationships in VR between products and consumers in a new way and actually drive business forward.

Follow Manouk Akopyan on Twitter @Manouk_Akopyan

Visa Is Supporting Olympians With 360-Degrees Of Acceptance

Visa, a major sponsor of the 2016 Olympic Games, has launched a 360-degree story experience featuring 12 inspirational vignettes. “Celebrating the acceptance of everyone, everywhere,” Visa’s slogan for its campaign applies to both the diverse athletes under sponsorship, as well as the claim that Visa cards are accepted in more places than anywhere else.

Viewable on desktop yet designed for mobile, the Rio 2016 campaign offers a 360-degree experience allowing users to rotate the menu, set against a panoramic view of Rio. Each of the 12 stories feature an idea, such as diversity in religion or gender. Once a story has been selected, users must simulate one of three methods of paying with Visa—waving, swiping or dipping an interactive image of a credit card, where users are briefly educated on how to use the card without being overly intrusive to the stories. The site is also designed to be viewed in portrait mode, so users don’t have to tilt their phones while navigating stories.

The stories themselves are each about 15 seconds long and vary from slide shows to video, each with its own message. “Diversity fuels competition, raises bars and shatters records. It goes beyond race, gender, age or ability,” one slide show reads.

Every story ends with a variation of Visa’s message of diversity, such as “all genders accepted here,” or “all ideas accepted here.” Users can then share the experience with others via Facebook and Twitter.

Visa 360 website

With 60 athletes, 2016 Team Visa is the most expansive group of Olympic and Paralympic athletes that the financial company has supported to date. The team has grown by 62 percent since the last Olympic Games, with athletes representing a range of 26 sports, from diving and dressage to taekwondo and table tennis. This year’s Team Visa includes the 10 competitors on the International Olympic Committee’s first-ever team of Refugee Olympic athletes.

“The refugee Olympic athletes are inspiring the world with their incredible stories of perseverance and bravery, overcoming great odds to get to the top of their respective sports and compete on the world’s stage,” Chris Curtin, Visa’s chief marketing innovation and brand officer, said in a press release. “These athletes, who will march with the Olympic flag at the Opening Ceremony in Rio, are a powerful addition to the Team Visa family, each embodying Visa’s belief in acceptance for everyone, everywhere.”

The “360-degrees of Acceptance” experience has been released in 81 markets in seven different languages. The site launched last week, but Visa declined to comment on traffic or sharing activity so far. Visa is no stranger to 360-degree experiences, having launched an interactive app for the 2014 Winter Olympics, allowing viewers to “train” alongside athletes from their mobile device.

Visa also used 360-degree videos earlier this year to profile NFL rookies Paxton Lynch, Braxton Miller, Shaq Lawson and Jaylon Smith ahead of the NFL Draft.

International EGames Group CEO Discusses ESports Showcase During Rio Olympics

There is eSports competition happening in Brazil August 15 and 16, but it’s not officially part of the Olympic Games. The Rio 2016 eGames Showcase takes place at British House in the historic Parque Lage in Rio De Janeiro. It’s part of a new push by the International eGames Committee (IEGC) to award medals to the best eSports players and teams across multiple eSports games. The competition will be livestreamed on Twitch and ESL helped set up the matches.

The competition this year will include some of the top SMITE teams from Brazil through partnerships with Hi-Rez Studios and Level Up. Nintendo is also on board with some of the top Super Smash Bros. players from around the world, including reigning EVO Champion Ally (from Canada), the winner of Smash Factor 5, Leo (from Mexico), and Larry Lurr (from the US) and J. Miller (from Great Britain). Casters Keitaro and juiceDoom will call the action.

Chester King, CEO of the IEGC, has watched his two teenage boys live and breathe eSports since 2005. He’s seen first-hand that eSports, in moderation and as part of a balanced life, can deliver great benefits. But with recent tournaments like The International awarding over $20 million in prizes, he didn’t want eSports to become all about the money. So IEGC was born. King explains his vision for the eGames in this exclusive interview.

eGames Rio 2016

 

Can you explain how the eGames came about and what role the British government has in this organization?

With over 20 years working in “traditional” sports, I realized that a medal-only competition was missing, so approached the British Government and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) about my plans to create a new international eSports competition—The eGames.

My uncle represented Great Britain in two Olympics and he always talked about the magic of them—as all the superstars from the various sports were in the same place at the same time. What we want to do is recreate that magic with the eGames, bringing together the best players from across to the globe to participate in a minimum of 20 titles across PC, console and mobile.

Originally, we wanted to call it the “elympics,” but the IOC suggested the eGames instead (please note, we are fully independent have no association with the IOC). I then contacted a group of like-minded people in the eSports industry to support the eGames vision who created the International eGames Committee, a not-for-profit organization. The British Government was supportive of our aims and have helped with the launch in April and also with the Rio eGames showcase. They are not involved financially.

Who is involved when it comes to advisors and members of the IEGC?

We have had a lot of help from most of the eSports industry, but in particular, World Gaming from Canada. The members of International eGames Committee’s International Advisory Board are all non-paid and their role is to advise the eGames in various aspects, but not with the title selection or team selection. They sit on the Advisory Board for 12 months, and the current members are Dr. Jo Twist (CEO of Ukie, the UK’s largest trade body), Jude Ower (experienced in global charities in gaming), Andrew Smith (Pinewood Studios), Andy Payne (20 year gaming veteran), Daniel Cossi (Brazilian representative for IESF who has helped the eGames in Rio) and Veronique Lallier (VP European Publishing at Hi-Rez).

How did you choose which eSports titles to focus on for this event?

We had a few restrictions. The British Government was sensitive about first-person shooter titles, and due to the physical space with British House, we were limited on the number of people we could have gaming. But we wanted to show a couple of titles to give a real flavor of what competitive video gaming is about.

How have you worked with Hi-Rez and Nintendo on this event?

Hi-Rez helped source some of the best players in Brazil and Nintendo UK helped us contact a few of the players who are participating, but there is no financial arrangement with either.

Was there interest from larger eSports companies such as Riot, Valve or Blizzard for this type of competition?

Yes, in particular, Activision Blizzard, but due to the size of the room we were limited on the titles we could have.

How are you tapping into the global media presence in Rio for the Olympics to connect them with the eSports phenomenon?

The team at British House have helped us in this regard, but we already had great interest from mainstream media such as ESPN, CNBC, Sky Broadcasting and The LA Times, among others.

What does livestreaming open up to this type of competition in reaching gamers?

The current gaming audience does not watch TV, so working with Twitch is the best way to do so.

Are there any sponsors or brands involved in this Rio showcase?

No, we wanted it to be as “pure” as possible—we like the Wimbledon look of presenting tennis, and so wanted something similar.

In general, how does your organization work with sponsors and brands around eSports?

We are in discussions with various brands about being an eTeam sponsor per country for the national qualifiers 2017 and the inaugural eGames in 2018.

Do you see this competition becoming a regular eGames event at both future Summer and Winter Games?

No. Our showcase in Rio happens to be the same time, but in 2018 and 2020, it will be after their games. The IOC is aware of our aims, but there is no association.

What potential do you see for the IOC adding eSports to the Olympics in the future?

 While we share the premise of competing for medals and national pride as opposed to prize money, we didn’t establish the eGames with future inclusion in mind. I think it would be logistically difficult to have the number of arenas required and eSports athletes housed at the same time.

The International eSports Federation (Ie-SF) from South Korea is trying to push for IOC recognition, but they are a separate organization.

Why Sponsored Content Can Tell Stories And Establish Trust With Consumers

As the FTC cracks down on labeling sponsored content, the time has never been more right to make sure those posts are the most effective they can be. Sponsored content is an opportunity for brands to establish themselves as an authority on news and entertainment websites, creating brand trust and entertaining consumers in a way that enhances, rather than detracts from, existing content.

A recent study by IAB asked 5,000 consumers to view a number of websites with sponsored content in a desktop format. Nearly nine out of ten (86 percent) of respondents feel that free content is made possible by sponsors. Although consumers understand and accept the need for sponsored content, that doesn’t mean they have to like it, as 60 percent said that they were more open to content that tells a story rather than reads like an infomercial.

The biggest takeaway—establish trust. Sponsored content that informs or entertains rather than sells is most effective when featured on a reputable site that is relevant to the brand and the target audience.

Relevant, Authoritative, Trustworthy

The most important element to successful content marketing, according to study participants, is the ability to trust the information offered. This is especially true for entertainment news sites, where 85 percent of respondents said that paid content was obvious (“Enjoying the drama between Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber? Here, try our hand cream!”). 91 percent said that relevance was the most important feature for entertainment sites when viewing sponsored content, followed by brand recognition and trust, both 83 percent.

  • For general newsfeeds, 90 percent said that relevant information was most effective for drawing interest, while 79 percent relied on brand recognition and trustworthiness of said brand. When it comes to business content feeds, however, respondents agreed that relevance, authority on the subject and trustworthiness were all important, at 89, 84 and 82 percent respectively.

IAB study 1 sponsored content

Paid content that is relevant, authoritative and trustworthy enhances a website rather than detracts. After viewing a number of websites with sponsored content, respondents across the board had a more favorable opinion of the website. Likewise, viewers were more likely to trust sponsored content that appears on reputable websites. Although a majority of those who participated in the study say that they prefer ads from a brand they know and trust, new brands will just have to be that much more relevant and informative.

How Cedar Point Became An Augmented Reality Theme Park

As the tremendous success of Pokémon GO demonstrates, augmented reality can turn the real world into an incredibly engaging game that challenges players to head out and explore. Cedar Point, located in Sandusky, Ohio and known as “The Roller Coaster Capital of the World,” recognized the tremendous potential of AR technology and updated its app with The Battle for Cedar Point experience. With it, attendees can join different roller coaster-themed clans to compete with each other by scanning different areas of the park with their smartphones, such as signs and special t-shirts, for an augmented reality experience. The technology essentially turns the theme park into one gigantic video game. At the end of the day, members of the winning clan can purchase a special pin to commemorate their victory.

Tony Clark, director of communications at Cedar Point talked to [a]listdaily about using augmented reality to enhance the roller coaster park’s experience.

When asked about how the AR game worked, Clark replied, “When guests arrive at the park, they’ll access the game through our new mobile app. They then join one of five ‘clans’ that represent our roller coasters. Throughout the day, they’ll point their phone at ‘targets’ in the park (ride ID signs, park maps, etc.) and most of those targets will come to life on their phone. They receive points by scanning those targets and by answering trivia within the game. At the end of each day, the winning clan is announced at our Luminosity nighttime show. Also, anyone who achieves a certain point level in the game can purchase a pin in our merchandise locations that represents their clan. And if they’re a part of the winning clan of the day, they can also purchase a victory pin, highlighting that they were the winner for the day.”

“We’ve been keeping an eye on emerging technologies and how they may enhance the guest experience in the park,” said Clark, describing how Cedar Point came up with the AR experience. “With augmented reality becoming so popular in gaming apps, and with the built-in environment to play a fun, competitive game, it made sense for us to dive into it with the debut of our world-record-breaking dive coaster, Valravn.”

With the AR experience, Cedar Point essentially becomes “gamified,” which encourages attendees to engage with the theme park like never before. “We’re able to transform many locations into targets,” said Clark, “so we’re exposing guests to attractions or areas of the park that they maybe haven’t experienced before or haven’t visited recently. There are also targets placed inside Valravn’s queue, so that’s a great way to boost engagement in an area where guests are likely already on their phones.”

Clark also went into detail about how Cedar Point got the word out about its unique experience. “We’ve promoted The Battle for Cedar Point through our traditional news releases, in-park audio announcements, pushes through our mobile app, e-newsletters, our website, in-park TV network (FUN TV) and social media. We’re encouraging the use of hashtag #BattleforCP when playing the game.”

According to Clark, attendees have been “overwhelmingly positive” about the experience, with Millennium Force being the most popular clan with the most victories this season. “Guest are having a great time playing it,” said Clark, “and it gives them an additional fun thing to do in the park. The best part is, you can choose to have a normal park experience, or you can enhance your experience by playing the game. Our guests are in control of the kind of visit they’d like to have when they’re with us.”

Cedar Point is one of the first theme parks to include an augmented reality experience, but we asked Clark for his thoughts about competing attractions such as the Six Flags virtual reality roller coasterwhich was developed in partnership with Samsung using the Gear VR viewer to put users into different environments as they rode a roller coaster. “While we can’t speak to what they are doing, I can say that we’ve been beta testing virtual reality headset technology on our Iron Dragon roller coaster at limited times,” Clark responded. “We’re looking at how the tech performs and holds up, what our loading and unloading times are, and most importantly, what our guests think of it. So far, that response has been completely positive.”

“Cedar Point will always remain a quintessential amusement park experience,” Clark said, when asked about how AR and VR technology might impact future promotions. “However, with the advancement of these technologies, it could change the way we talk about the park, share our news and give our guests more reasons to come back. It’s critical that we dip our toes in. These experiences are new, different and fun. If they can enhance our guests’ visit to the park, we’re definitely going to try to make them work.”

Playable Mobile Ads Get Winning Results

As mobile ads continue to grow in importance as solutions to the app discovery problem, advertisers are constantly looking for ways to improve the performance of mobile ads. One such method is the playable, interactive mobile ad, which mobile advertising DSP CrossInstall has been creating and deploying with great success.

Founded in 2012 by several advertising and gaming executives, CrossInstall is a bootstrapped company created to support mobile user acquisition on both the iOS and Android platforms through programmatic bidding. As their website notes, “CrossInstall offers a unique approach to mobile game advertising as it combines custom-built playable mobile gaming ads with a programmatic, performance based bidder ensuring the ads hit the right audience.”

Panda PopCrossInstall creates its playable ads using a combination of HTML 5 and JavaScript, and uses a customized bidder with proprietary algorithms to deliver those ads. “The performance-based bidder drives app installs for advertisers at scale on various mobile ad exchanges including DoubleClick, MoPub and others,” notes CrossInstall on their website. CrossInstall’s clients among mobile game publishers includes Game Show Network, Machine Zone, SGN, PuzzleSocial, Pocket Gems, NaturalMotion and Big Fish Games among others.

Two notable case studies shown on CrossInstall’s website are with PuzzleSocial (and their game Daily Celebrity Crossword) and with SGN (and their game Panda Pop). CrossInstall found with Daily Celebrity Crossword that new user growth was 20 percent higher, and the campaign resulted in about 50 percent of programmatic traffic and 20 percent of overall traffic. “Since we started working with CrossInstall we have experienced impressive new user growth,” said Shamanth Rao, director of acquisition at PuzzleSocial. “Because of the highly engaging nature of playable ads, our conversion rates on playables from CrossInstall are about 20 to 25 percent higher, allowing us to scale aggressively.”

With SGN, CrossInstall produced double-digit increases in both LTV and revenue for Panda Pop. “With one of the highest ARPI, player/user percentage, day one retention rate, and LTVs we have seen to date, CrossInstall has proven to be a top, consistent install provider for Panda Pop and other key titles,” said Sumee Oh, director of marketing and user acquisition at SGN.

Jeff Marshall
Jeff Marshall, CrossInstall CEO

Jeff Marshall, CEO of CrossInstall, spoke with [a]listdaily recently about their playable, programmatic mobile ads and how they are performing for mobile games.

How did CrossInstall get into playable ads?

We started CrossInstall started about four years ago, focused as a mobile DSP [demand-side platform] working in the programmatic space. I did game development for a number of years along with some of the other co-founders, so we knew that space well. We worked mostly with gaming clients. They’re sophisticated buyers on mobile, focused on their return on ad spending and how to measure that well. About a year ago we started getting into the interactive ads. The years before that we would just work with whatever ad creatives the advertisers would send us—their videos, their image ads—but then we decided to take on doing the creatives ourselves. We found that interactive is really the way to go. It gives so much more power to both the process of creating the ads and iterating on the campaigns. In the end it’s just higher quality traffic for the advertiser. Giving users a preview of what the app is like is a powerful concept.

How effective are your playable ads compared to ordinary mobile advertising?

We’ve done some benchmarks, and we’ll see about a 3x conversion difference between a standard full screen image ad versus a playable ad. Right off the bat, it’s more engaging and it gets a higher conversion rate than your traditional ads.

How difficult is it to create these playable ads? They must be more difficult to create than ordinary ads. What’s the process like?

It’s a fairly difficult process. What’s appropriate for a 20-or 30-second ad experience? That’s one of the challenges. It’s not just about ‘you have a crossword game, I’m going to pop a crossword in front of you.’ You really have to take some care and thought into how you are going to present that in a short ad experience, while still focusing on what the core mechanic of this app is that we’re trying to advertise.

It usually kicks off with a brainstorming process with our creative team in-house. We’ll try a bunch of concepts, we’ll storyboard those, go back to the advertisers and go through the storyboards and see how they feel. It’s all HTML 5/JavaScript. The design and development process takes place here, and we’ll review that with the client. Typically the clients care about how their brand is presented—they’re the experts in what their app is like and they want to make sure the experience reflects that well.Celebrity Crossword

Now we start running this creative. Since we’re doing a programmatic buy, we’ve got our algorithms in the background that are trying to model what users are going to take action, convert, and become good quality, post-install users. So it’s out there doing the buying and trying to price these impressions. The creatives themselves, we’ll change that and iterate over time. We’re capturing data on what people are doing. If you start interacting, how long does it take before you interact, how many times do you interact with the ad, what elements are people reacting to? All those stats are collected and those ads are dynamically changed on the fly. It’s an ongoing process; the campaigns definitely iterate over time.

Do playable ads work better for certain types of games more than others?

We’re seeing them working pretty much across the board. You’ve got very casual titles, there’s also non-gaming social applications and things like that, then you have your hardcore RPG games—it works well there, too. The thing that changes is what you want to do in the creative itself. If you have a very casual title—a match-3 game—you’re going to probably end up being true to the application. If you have a hardcore RPG it’s hard to make a twenty second experience that really shows you what that roleplaying game is like. So you capture a couple of mechanics of it, or you just play off of the theme. You have to get more creative the more hardcore the game gets, and with the lighter games or applications you can be more true to the experience.

What kind of reach do you have with these ads, and what kind of scale are you seeing?

That’s what’s been really fun about the programmatic part. We’re buying in all the real-time ad exchanges, so the reach touches about every mobile user out there. We’re working with Google, Twitter, Rubicon and a number of these other companies. We’re seeing up to a billion unique device IDs in a week. We can reach globally. The challenge in the programmatic space is it’s a competitive bidding environment, so you have to have the algorithms to back it up and buy intelligently.

What’s ahead for CrossInstall in the next year?

We’re a small company—24 people now—we’ve been a bootstrap company to this point and we’re capturing a lot of success now. We want to be the top mobile DSP out there, and be the clear choice if you want to do performance buying. If you want to do interesting things with creatives, we want people to think of CrossInstall. We’re already one of the top DSPs out there in terms of what the ad exchanges tell us, but we’d like to be the clear winner on that. Gaming is our background and it’s been our focus, but we want to spread outside of gaming as well and grow that side of the business next year.

Unity CMO: Adoption And Use Of VR “Will Explode”

At the recent Casual Connect conference in San Francisco, Unity’s chief marketing officer Clive Downie spoke to attendees about the scope of the opportunity ahead in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). The time is right to jump into the markets, and Downie made a convincing case for jumping in despite the risks. Unity, being the supplier of development tools used in millions of products, has a unique perspective on the adoption and use of VR and AR, since they provide tools for developing products in those realms. When Downie spoke, [a]listdaily was among the attendees in the packed session.

“People knew a long way back that VR and AR were going to change the world at some point,” Downie said. “We’re just starting to see that now.” We should remind ourselves of the pioneers of decades past who started on early versions of what we are beginning to take for granted. Virtual reality has been a mainstay of science fiction novels and movies for a long time, and early VR devices and headset began to be constructed in the 1970s, with development continuing from that point. “Fifty years ago people dared to dream that VR could change the world,” Downie noted. “While we think we’re at the beginning of a curve, actually we’re at the latter stages of one of the longest technology arcs we’ve been part of.”

Clive Downie
Unity CMO Clive Downie

The VR market has been buzzing for years now. “There’s a lot of heat around this magical thing called VR,” Downie said. Analyst numbers show that AR/VR is forecasted to hit $120 billion in value by 2020, with about 90 percent of that coming from VR and about 10 percent of that from AR. By comparison, Downie pointed out, the global market for game software in 2016 is projected to be less than $100 billion. Of course, much of the revenue projected for the VR market comes from hardware and from software that’s not games—other entertainment, business and commercial uses, scientific and medical applications and so on.

While some analysts see the progress of VR as a simple linear growth projection over time, Downie rejects that as simplistic. “A linear growth rate isn’t what’s going to happen, and it’s not what we’re seeing, either,” said Downie. “The prediction that we have at Unity is we’re going to see AR and VR start slower than some people predict. Some will say that AR and VR are fizzling out, that it’s just not getting traction, despite things like a $25 billion market cap increase for companies like Nintendo because they dared to do something different.” While Nintendo’s enormous share price rise was due to the success of Pokémon GO, it’s since dropped back somewhat as people realized Nintendo won’t be directly profiting from the title.

“We’ll see this gap of disappointment between perception and reality, and it will be real, but in the end it will be fairly meaningless. Because just like all those people knew 30 or 40 years ago, we have to recognize what we have. We are in this once-in-a-generation production of new tech so compelling that will change everything. This is a once-in-a-generation moment.”

Downie sees VR as a not just an interesting technology, but as a technology that will change the world. Getting there won’t be easy, and those who develop for VR at the beginning are going to have to overcome difficulties.

“Like every major step-change in technology, the early pioneers who grit it out face high risk but supremely great reward,” Downie said. “This is a step-change in technology, right up there with electricity, the combustion engine and the internet. The reason why adoption and use will explode to those levels is fundamentally straightforward: there’s going to come a time and VR and AR will make your life better.”

The point at which VR and AR become viable, revenue-producing markets is of course the critical issue for investors, developers, and consumers. “How close are we to mass adoption? I think we’re closer than ever, and mobile is leading the way,” Downie stated. “This is no disrespect to the excellent Rift, to the Vive, to PlayStation VR, which are putting immense gaming power in the hands of consumers very affordably. They can and will have deep communities of customers, but I believe it is mobile that will speed these new realities to to a voluminous amount of people around the world.”

The pre-eminence of mobile as the VR platform with the biggest audience is already clear from the success of Google Cardboard, with over 5 million units shipped and over a thousand apps in place, Downie noted. Gear VR has a million users in place. “Google announced Daydream, which is going to bring a controller, and right away it will be more functional and accessible and approachable. Facebook 360 was introduced in June, and you don’t need to use a headset. It gets users to move around in a 360 space, and it can be used with both Gear VR and the Rift—getting the masses more used to VR step by step.”

Of course, Downie noted the amazing success of Pokémon GO as getting people familiar with AR—and by extension, VR—preparing the way for more content. “AR and later VR are becoming acceptable as media for people to interact with and get used to,” Downie said. “This is massive adoption on a global scale, This product alone could easily get to 10 percent of that 1 billion consumption number.”

Downie went on to note the tools and techniques necessary to succeed in VR, but he had some general advice of use not only to developers but to marketers as well. “The master rule is there are no rules,” Downie opined. “At this point in the VR experience, people are just trying to figure out what will work and what doesn’t. So you have to take chances, you have to try new things. Don’t let yourself be constrained by what you think will work. That’s the worst thing to do in this moment. Free yourself from the conventions that you already know.”

“And because there are no rules, you have to remember that you’re going to make mistakes. You’ll make more mistakes when you go into AR and VR than you’ve ever made in your game-making career,” Downie warned.

Downie had words of encouragement for game makers and marketers who are looking to jump into the early days of the VR and AR markets. “Great content is going to drive adoption—it always does,” Downie said. “Content is, and always has been, king. That’s where the creators of tomorrow come in. The opportunity is here, it’s real, and the opportunity is waiting for people like you to dream and to invent something we haven’t thought about. Eventually everyone will be in this place. My advice is to get there first, because it’s going to be worth it.”

HP’s Backpack Brings Untethered Virtual Reality Experience

One of the problems plaguing room-scale virtual reality is that people need to be tethered to big, bulky headsets and desktop computers with wires dangling at their feet during their experiences.

But don’t trip, because HP is untangling this problem by introducing the HP Omen X VR backpack, a purpose-built backpack that is taking a sizable step in offering optimal VR experiences.

The compact backpack, currently a prototype, weighs less than 10 pounds and carries two batteries that has enough juice for a full hour of VR immersion; a wireless display, mouse and keyboard are part of the package, too. The best part? It doubles as a portable and powerful compact PC for all your needs. The full-powered gaming desktop will give owners of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift a full untethered experience.

Rick Champagne, worldwide segment manager for media and entertainment for HP Z workstations and VR Displays, joined [a]listdaily to discuss the innovative platform.

hewlett-packard-3

How is HP positioning itself in the VR space?

There are two sides to VR—content creation and consumption. HP has been in the film industry for over 75 years. HP’s John Frederick, Bob Myers, Karl Rasche and Tom Lianza have even been honored with a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award for our HP DreamColor Display technology. We’ve been in the industry a very long time, and HP Z workstations are a platform of choice for people in the film and games industry. Now those workstations are being used for VR content creation. Then we have our consumer and gaming group focused on the consumption of VR with the Omen X Backpack and HP Phoenix desktop computer. We’re looking at VR from a holistic point of view, not just the consumer side of it.

What is the idea behind the Omen X Backpack? How did it come about?

Really, the problem with VR right now is the tether. You’re attached at the head with a cable and if you’ve seen people doing VR experiences, particularly if you come to a trade show, we have handlers that will hold the cable and make sure you’re not tripping on it. That’s not feasible in your living room, or in any room-scale VR volume. We want to get rid of the cable completely so you can just be immersed. Of course, we had to do something that was purpose-built and super-high performance.

What does a product like this do for VR? How does it get people to want to experience the technology even more?

We’re still feeling out the market and getting a better understanding. You can imagine that there’s so many commercial applications like this where you want an untethered experience, like a VR entertainment center. Anything like movie theaters, theme parks, concerts, sporting events, or any kind of place where you would have a commercial setting . . . you can’t handle everybody. This is just going to allow people to roam around freely in a VR experience. We’re still learning. We’re going to get the form factor smaller; we’re going to get higher performance, and longer battery life. VR is changing, so we’re going to keep pace with the industry. We’re going to continue to focus on things like heat management and customization so people can go in and change things up as the industry grows. Since we announced the backpack, it’s created a lot of conversations and we’re excited by what the future holds.

What are some of the marketing opportunities that this opens up that were somewhat non-existent before?

This is not a cosmetic model; it’s real working hardware and we showed it at Siggraph just last week. This is definitely an eye catcher; it’s a conversation starter, and it has a real function; it solves a real problem, so we’re really excited about that.

How are you reaching consumers with experiential marketing?

At VRLA earlier this month, we worked with BlackBoxTV, FullDomePro and an experiential artist, Android Jones, showing some of the work that he’s done specifically with creating immersive experiences. His HTC Vive experience called MicroDoseVR is like Tilt Brush, but it’s a particle-based system that anyone can use to create unimaginable art.

How do you see VR developing? How will the industry keep growing?

Cost is one of the things—it has to come down to make VR accessible for more people. It’s expensive today to get a system that’s high enough to power VR. We have consumer solutions designed with the consumption of VR in mind. We of course have our HP Z Workstations for the creation piece of it, and so as cost comes down, it will become more accessible. You’ll see consoles like PlayStation VR coming out, too. All of those things are converging right now, so we have to be ready. The industry has to be ready, and the content has to be ready for this major shift that’s about to happen.

Do you think consumers are ready for VR?

The content creators are already working on the problem. They’re creating very rich environments that allow consumers to connect with the content in ways that were never possible before. The GPU manufacturers are innovating at a pace that is unprecedented, and there’s an intense battle being fought there too. A lot of amazing technology is being created in our industry. Everything from advanced rendering to light fields, and just dealing with heavy amounts of data in a 360-degree environment. Everything is coming together. Next year is going to be the year of VR. It’s going to be a new world.

Follow Manouk Akopyan on Twitter @Manouk_Akopyan

ESL Bringing Influencers And Huge Prize Pools To Gamescom

ESports League (ESL) is headed to Gamescom, reinforcing its eSports brand through strategic partnerships and community engagement. Setting up shop in Hall 9, the ESL Arena will host a number of video game tournaments throughout Gamescom including Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), Elsword, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Lawbreakers, League of Legends, Overwatch and more. These tournaments are far more than demonstrations—the Heroes of the Storm Fall Regional and Overwatch Atlantic Showdowns each feature a $100,000 prize pool.

Influencers will play a major role in experiential marketing for ESL, pitting Boss Key’s Cliff Bleszinski and his squad against a team of influencers within his upcoming first person shooter game Lawbreakers. The eSports giant has created a number of strategic partnerships for the events, including HP, Intel, Logitech, Nexon and Samsung. These tech companies will in turn have access to ESL’s eSports fans with exclusive activities in their booths. Scheduled events range from YouTuber appearances to VR experiences, as well as cosplay and gaming competitions among a showing of the latest gaming technology. Official partners of the Arena include Kinguin, Lioncast, One.de, Plantronics, Red Bull, Twitch, Wüstenrot Bausparkasse and Zowie.

Not usually associated with eSports, Nintendo is joining the fun as well, hosting a live Splatoon Showdown on the Beta Stage of the ESL Arena on Aug. 17, which will be livestreamed across Twitch and ESL, with Gamescom attendees able to watch the finals live on stage. Splatoon is Nintendo’s family-friendly take on the shooter genre that utilizes teamwork and shoots ink rather than bullets. Perhaps this is a sign that Nintendo wants a piece of that $1 billion eSports revenue.

ESports fans will be able to keep up with the latest goings-on through the official ESL Event App for iOS and Android. The app, designed to keep users engaged for ESL One Frankfurt and ESL One Cologne, includes schedules for all stage and booth activities. Of course, the ESL shop will also be on hand for fans to pick up souvenirs and gear to support their favorite clans.

Being only two months after E3, video game publishers face the challenge of when and where to invest in a large expo presence throughout the year. ESL has an advantage, in that eSports is relevant year-round—unlike E3, Gamescom is open to the pubic and also happens to be the largest video game event in the world, making it the ideal place to build hype around its culture of eSports.

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