Activision, Carl’s Jr. And Hardee’s Assemble The Ultimate Care Package

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Call of Duty: Black Ops III has been building quite a bit of steam leading into its release on the market next month, between both reveals and features to the casual audience, as well as a devoted base for eSports enthusiasts. Soon, fans of the game will be able to eat along with the action.

Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s announced a partnership today with video game publisher Activision to create a special Ultimate Care Package for customers. This includes a combo meal consisting of a special burger, fries, a drink, and a peel-and-win game featuring a variety of prizes.

This is the biggest promotional tie-in that the fast food chain has had, and it also marks Activision’s first Call of Duty tie-in with a quick-service restaurant (QSR for short). The promotion will also include a Veterans Day fundraising campaign for Activision’s Call of Duty Endowment program, in addition to a national ad campaign featuring the return of model Charlotte McKinney.

Call of Duty is the most beloved video game franchise in the world and one of the biggest entertainment brands of all-time, so partnering with Activision for the launch of the new Call of Duty: Black Ops III presents a great opportunity to bring our brands together, says Brad Haley, chief marketing officer for Carl s Jr. and Hardee s restaurants. Our target customers love burgers, like our new Tex Mex Bacon Thickburger, and Call of Duty, so the two have now come together in an Ultimate Care Package combo meal, complete with customized Call of Duty packaging that includes a peel-and-win game piece for a chance to win epic Black Ops III prizes.

The giveaway will consist of a number of prizes, including a three-day trip to Los Angeles and a tour of the Treyarch development studio, as well as Astro gaming headsets, a “Take Out” personalization pack for immediate use in the game, and other Call of Duty oriented gear.

Rob Kostich, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Call of Duty, added, We re thrilled to partner with Carl s Jr. and Hardee s on this far-reaching program that truly benefits the entire Call of Duty community. This unique collaboration and campaign gives fans across the country a chance to win some great prizes in-game and in-restaurant, and, importantly, creates a special activation for our military veterans. We are very thankful to Carl s Jr. and Hardee s for their support of the Call of Duty Endowment, whose sole purpose is to drive our shared passion to put as many of our returning veterans into high quality jobs as possible.

Less fattening Call of Duty: Black Ops III promotions include a revamped World League that will launch a new tournament in 2016, a special edition that comes with desktop Juggernog mini-fridge,and an exclusive PlayStation 4 bundle that features a specially designed console and controller.

As Twitter Plots Its Next Steps, Instagram May Skip Ahead

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Instagram turned out to be a lucrative investment for Facebook, which bought the photo/video sharing site in 2012 for a billion dollars. It has since garnered 400 million users, and it’s still on the rise. Now a new report from Adotas suggests that it could be putting Twitter to shame.

eMarketer provided numbers indicating that Instagram’s global ad revenue will reach $600 million this year, and will increase even further to $1.5 billion next year and $2.8 billion in 2017. Additionally, its thriving advertising program will enable it to compete, and perhaps outpace, Twitter in terms of both ad revenue and users.

Twitter’s new CEO Jack Dorsey stated that the reason that Twitter may be lagging behind is due to the lack of bold product changes. He also cites a lack of discipline within the company, and not giving the employees the clear company vision they deserve.

As for Instagram, it’s on the rise globally, with more than 75% of users living outside of the U.S., including Brazil, Japan and Indonesia, making up a big chunk of the audience.

That said, Twitter isn’t counting itself out, even in the face of Instagram’s meteoric rise. It has plans to launch a new Lightning service for a better handle on live events. Furthermore, Re/Code reports that in spite of recent layoffs within the company, Dorsey has noted that big things will come from the smaller team.

Former Microsoft exec Steve Ballmer, who became the new owner of the Los Angeles Clippers last year, is investing a substantial amount into Twitter (a 4% stake) according to a separate Re/Code report, and he’s not the only one putting a lot of faith and money into the company. Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal invested a five percent stake around the same time.

Whether these big changes can translate to bigger audience numbers has yet to be seen. Now it’s just a matter of seeing what Twitter’s next move will be.

We’ll find out more from the company when it reports its financials on October 27th.

China’s Gaming Revenue Is Officially Outpacing The U.S.

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It has been just over a year since China lifted its longstanding ban on console sales, but Chinese gamers haven’t wasted any time diving in.

A report published by Newzoo lists the top 100 countries according to game revenues, and China takes the top spot by bringing in roughly $22.2 billion. In comparison, the U.S. took in around $21.9 billion, which puts it at a close second place, and outpaces the next three countries on the list (Japan, S. Korea, and Germany) combined. Both China and the U.S. taken together represent almost half of the $91 billion in global revenues earned by the gaming industry.

Newzoo report

The top 10 countries for gaming revenue are: China, The United States of America, Japan, South Korea, Germany, The United Kingdom, France, Canada, Spain, and Italy. The last three have close numbers to each other.

Newzoo also reveals in a separate report that the highest earning game company in world is the Chinese owned Tencent Holdings Ltd, which has stakes in other game companies such as League of Legends developer Riot Games, Activision Blizzard, and Epic Games, makers of the Unreal Engine. Sony, Microsoft, EA, Activision are all listed respectively behind Tencent.

China continues to be an important and fast-growing market in Asia, but it isn’t alone. Japan and South Korea are third and fourth place earners, while Southeast Asia – particularly Thailand and Indonesia – are potential up-and-comers.

The massive growth in game revenues in China shouldn’t be much of a shock, considering how the country has been a market leader in mobile apps and saw explosive growth in mobile for quite some time, inspiring mobile game companies like Kabam and others to push aggressively into the market. Earlier this year, Kabam’s COO Kent Wakeford saw China as the company’s opportunity to develop the first “billion dollar video game.”

That same sentiment was heard when [a]listdaily spoke to Golden Gate Games co-founder Keith McCurdy, who described China’s mobile market as being on a “It’s on a hyper-growth trajectory,” doubling each year. McCurdy also remarked that at the time, “In the top ten games, five of them are Western games, things like Plants Vs. Zombies and Subway Surfers. There’s a huge, fast-growing market, and there’s a proven appetite for Western content.”

The Chinese love gaming, and they love being Number One, and now we have further evidence of that.

YouTube Gaming: Over Two Billion Streaming Hours Served

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Ever since YouTube Gaming launched earlier this year, it has been making great strides for video game livestreaming content like “Let’s Play” videos. Now we get a glimpse of how successful the service has been.

YouTube recently updated its blog page to discuss streaming numbers, and they’re quite impressive. The site estimates that gamers view more than 144 billion minutes of video per month, between posted videos and live streams on YouTube. “To put it into perspective, that’s like watching Let’s Play’s for more than 270,000 years straight 24 hours a day or beating Final Fantasy VII 1,900,000 times a day!” the post reads.

The company also highlights a number of improvements to the YouTube Gaming service.

Firstly, it introduced a better focus on mobile capture, thus empowering streams of “every shape and size,” including players of popular mobile games like Boom Beach or Hearthstone. “You can now record and live stream mobile gameplay on-the-go directly from Android devices using Mobile Capture on YouTube Gaming,” the post reads. “You don’t need any additional hardware or software just tap Go Live (or your avatar on a phone) in the YouTube Gaming app, turn on your selfie cam and record your commentary with your phone’s microphone.”

The company also discusses sponsorship potential. A new beta program is in place to help assist with Fan Funding and Sponsorships, which offer perks such as a live chat badge and the ability to create exclusive chat sessions for a small monthly fee. YouTube intends to expand the list of beta channels as time goes on.

Other features that are being introduced include better search capabilities to find relevant livestreams, bookmarking videos for later, a redesigned watching page with improved performance, better search navigation for iOS devices and importing existing subscriptions through the Settings menu.

It sounds great, but YouTube Gaming still has a ways to go before it can catch up with its chief rival, Twitch. The livestreaming service continues to draw in a vast community of gamers (100 million monthly and rising), and works with big-name partners such as Old Spice. On top of that, the company recently hosted its first successful TwitchCon, bringing in both game companies and streamers to appeal to its vast community. Twitch has over 1.7 million broadcasters, with 12,000 that are making a decent living by working within its partnership program.

Now that YouTube is facing fierce competition from Facebook, we’ll have to keep a close eye on how quickly the livestreaming sector develops.

Landmark Entertainment Breaking Ground On Virtual World’s Fair

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Theme parks are fun, but very pricey. Just ask anyone who has visited Disney World lately. However, Landmark Entertainment may drastically cut ticket and travel prices by creating a new virtual experience that people can visit from the comfort of their homes.

A report from Variety details how The Landmark Entertainment Group intends to create a Virtual’s World’s Fair, expected to launch in 2017, which will allow millions of consumers to enjoy entertainment, shop and take part in other activities using virtual reality headsets. “It’s the world coming together to celebrate the world,” said Landmark president and CEO Tony Christopher.

This virtual space will offer many different forms entertainment, including 3D projection, surround sound and special effects. It’s certainly territory that Landmark is familiar with, as it’s created attractions for theme parks such as Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man and Terminator 2 3D. Being that it will be a digital environment, a Virtual World’s Fair would not be constrained by real world matters like physics, geography or real estate.

The fair will have appeal for visitors of all ages.”Dataland” will be where smaller children can try things out, while “Passportal” transports users to faraway lands. Special events such as concerts will also be featured. “We want to be seen as a project that is meaningful,” said Christopher.

On a related note, the company revealed plans for a virtual theme park earlier this year, with plans to launch a L.I.V.E. Centre in China in 2018, followed by 20 to 30 locations that could bring in five million visitors a year.

“With virtual reality, we can put you in the African savanna or fly you into outer space,” said Landmark CEO Tony Christopher, speaking with Fortune Magazine about the experience. “This completely changes the idea of an old-fashioned museum by allowing kids to experience prehistoric dinosaurs or legendary creatures as we develop new experiences that keep them coming back for more. We’ll combine education and entertainment into one destination that’s always evolving.”

To help promote The Virtual World’s Fair as it develops, Landmark Entertainment intends to launch a smaller experience, called the Pavilion of Me, in about a year. It will offer the ability to listen to music, enjoy videos and shop in a virtual reality setting. A freemium model will be available, so that users can customize certain parts of the experience at no charge.

The biggest question is whether or not  these virtual exhibitions and theme parks will gain many visitors. Consumer virtual reality headsets won’t release until next year, and we don’t know how quickly they’ll take off. Linden Lab, makers of the virtual world Second Life, is also working on a similar idea with Project Sansar.

But we’re sure that there will be plenty of room in the virtual world for multiple experiences. At least you won’t have to wait on long lines.

Millions of People Are Watching These 10 Influencers On Periscope

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These folks aren’t limiting themselves to just 6.5 seconds anymore. Nope! Periscope has been offering live streamers and their viewers an altogether different experience where live interaction is at the core. Here are Periscope’s finest, who are offering millions of viewers a candid conversation, a peep into their lives and more.

 

 

Marketers Are Falling Out With Traditional Product Placement

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Although product placement is still common, like the Samsung and Verizon Wireless products in Jurassic World, that doesn’t mean it’s the go-to tool across all mediums.

A new article in the Wall Street Journal indicates that product placement has seen a drop-off as far as prime time television is concerned. The report indicates, per numbers provided by Nielsen, that product placement appearances during the new broadcast season’s debut week saw a decline, down 45% to 104, compared to 2014’s premiere week.

This isn’t a recent decline, either. Last year’s broadcasts also saw a decrease in product placements, with just under 4,500 for the entire broadcast TV season  a 3% drop from the previous year, and a 20% decrease from the 2012-2013 season.

The reason for this Many think that new advertising platforms, such as influencer advertising, are leading the way. “There are so many more options available for advertising now and every year it grows,” said Chad Dreas, managing director of media analytics for Nielsen.

Another factor to consider is keeping advertisers in the fray. Andy Donchin, chief investment officer for Amplify US, notes that it’s a “big commitment” in terms of keeping them around. “There is an out of pocket premium” that advertisers need to pay, and it doesn’t always make sense.

Companies also seek better integration of products into shows, not just a TV character grabbing a product secondarily as they continue acting. That said, there are examples of when product placement still works, but with less subtlety. The video above demonstrates how Stephen Colbert incorporated Sabra roasted red pepper hummus into his debut episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. The talk show host also gave Oreos a nod during a Donald Trump segment.

Some companies, like Cigna Corp. health insurance, are still involved with this form of advertising, which can be seen in various ABC programs. This includes some audience members from Jimmy Kimmel Live having a double do their jobs so they can get medical check-ups. Stephen Cassell, global branding officer at Cigna, explains that this integration “amplifies the commercial message.”

Dreas also added that product integrations “add value and increase the effectiveness” of ads, although there is still that question of other methods, and how they can work with advertisers.

This includes the growing power of influencer marketing. A recent study showed that 60% of marketers planned on increasing the budget allocated to it. With it, a number of other advertising methods could prove effective without obvious plugs. These include word of mouth across social media platforms, which have better ROI (which range anywhere from $2 to $6.50 per dollar spent, depending on the program) and utilize data to a better effect.

“Influencer campaigns are so much more accountable than traditional vehicles like broadcast or outdoor billboards. Ultimately, those figures are estimates based off industry standards,” says Steven Lai, talent group director for ION. “But digital content like influencer campaigns can be granularly tracked from impressions/views to clicks to purchase. Setting up campaigns properly, we can track every action a user takes as they progress through the purchase funnel and optimize in real time.”

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Emojis: A Powerful Tool For Communication

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The overwhelming use of emojis in social media is undeniable, and the variety includes everything from happy faces or the “smiley poop.” Now it appears as though the popularity of emojis may overtake common words.

A pair of reports from eMarketer helps gives some solid evidence. The first one, titled “Who Needs Words When You Have Emojis ” discusses how half of the comments on Instagram are made up on emojis and how they’re increasingly used in captions.

ResizedImage600715 Chart 2

Based on numbers provided by AYTM Market Research, 48.9 percent of adult users on the Internet in the U.S. have used some form of emoji, either in social media or in text messages.

The chart breaks down the frequency of emoji use across social media and messages. 22.7 percent indicate that they use them only sometimes, while 14 percent state they used them often. However, the poll does not include teens, who are a prime demographic for emoji use.

Emojis also take brand interaction a long way. A poll conducted by Iconosquare last year indicates that “publishing content and using hashtags provided by brands” was one unique and effective way for Instagram users to interact with contests on the Facebook-owned social platform.

Estimates show that from the 77.6 million people in the U.S.will access Instagram across all devices, showing a a year-over-year growth of 20.9%. That audience may grow to 111.6 million by 2019, with four in ten web users and a third of the population using the site and emojis as an expressive tool.

Emojis are more commonly used by U.S. users both online and through mobile devices. The top reason “They help me more accurately express what I am thinking,” say 70% of responses. The second most-cited reason is “It makes it easy for other people to understand me” at 64.7 percent, and “They help create a more personal connection with the other person” in third with under 50 percent.

Brands have taken note, and have been increasingly open to including emojis as a form of communication. Brands like GE, Goldman Sachs and Chevy are just a few notables. Chevy even went as far to center a campaign, #ChevyGoesEmoji, around them this summer, bringing in Norm MacDonald on board for a series of Emoji Academy videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch v=_ks1gQKdtgA

Emogi, a communications company, conducted a study that indicates around nine in ten U.S. Internet users use Emojis in one form or another. Out of that group, seven of these ten said they use them to better expression their thoughts, while 65 percent believe that people better understand them.

So brands’ enthusiasm for emojis is almost certainly valid. Just make sure if you’re playing, you’re playing it cool.

ArenaNet Partners With ESL For ‘Guild Wars 2’ ESports League

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ESports have come a long way over the past few years, and with an increasing number of leagues dedicated to specific games like Call of Duty. Now, ArenaNet wants to take the popular Guild Wars 2 to a new level.

ArenaNet announced a partnership with the Electronic Sports League to create the ESL Guild Wars 2 Pro League, which includes two seven-week seasons of tournaments, with qualifiers starting November 14th, and $400,000 (broken down to $200,000 per season) in prizes. This is a huge bounty compared to most eSports tournaments.

Part of the reason Guild Wars 2 is such an eSports darling stems from ArenaNet’s decision to make the game free-to-play this past August, garnering a bigger audience as a result. “Since the base game has gone free, we’ve seen a huge influx of audiences from countries like Brazil, Poland, Russia, Spain, and Turkey,” said John Corpening, competitive game director for the game.

ResizedImage600355 Guild

The structure for the tournament is broken down above, going from the Open Qualifier to the World Championship. “From a business perspective, [the pro league] is important to us because playtime is increased if we can make players excited about playing PVP (player vs. player),” said Steve Fowler, head of global marketing at ArenaNet.

The average player that doesn’t engage in PVP takes part in approximately 722 minutes (12 hours) of action per week. With PVP, that number increases to “744 minutes per week,” said Fowler. That’s a lot of time to practice for a big prize.

PVP has a huge part in the Guild Wars 2 competitions, and a player only has to get to level two to access it, so it’s wide open for everyone to jump in and compete, according to ArenaNet. The tournament will support both amateur and professional teams alike, so everyone has the opportunity to win.

Building a league not only presents a chance for eSports to shine on yet another stage, but it also opens up promotion for Guild Wars 2’s existing community, as a new expansion for Guild Wars 2, titled Heart of Thorns, is set to release on October 23rd.

Speaking exclusively with [a]listdaily, Fowler added, “We are extremely excited about our new partnership with ESL on Guild Wars 2 Pro Leagues. It is the natural evolution of the relationship we have built with them supporting Guild Wars 2 competitive community over the last 15 months. The league is a direct response to supporting the fastest growing part of Guild Wars 2, PvP, and happens to come at a time when Guild Wars 2 is experiencing massive new interest in anticipation of the release of our first expansion, Heart of Thorns, and the recently released Play for Free version of the core game.”

Machine Zone CEO Talks Brand Marketing, TV Ads

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At GamesBeat 2015, Dean Takahashi had a Mystery Guest scheduled for Monday, and it was a worthy guest indeed Gabe Leydon, CEO of Machine Zone, the creators of Game of War: Fire Age. That’s the mobile game that’s been consistently #2 or # in the top-grossing charts for both Android and iOS since soon after it appeared, and that’s generating enough revenue to put Machine Zone (according to rumor) nearing $1 billion in annual revenue. Not bad for a single game. Leydon spoke in a fireside chat with GamesBeat lead writer Dean Takahashi, providing a rare glimpse inside of Machine Zone.

“Your success comes from one game. How do you explain it ” Takahashi asked Leydon. “The game we wanted to make is incredibly complex,” Leydon said. “When we started building Game of War back in 2011, we wanted to build something that a whole global ecosystem could play together at the same time. We built it to be a very engaging, very complex experience, with tremendous amounts of concurrency and translation systems we built to support this global community. It’s an ultra-hardcore experience that was the exact opposite of what everybody else was doing, which was Apple-esque UI, simple, easy-to-understand experience. No one was thinking about games with thousands of options. If you look at the PC or console market they’re pretty much all like that. It’s close to something like EVE Online, it’s the largest single-shard game in the world ever it’s bigger than Second Life or EVE Online. It’s very, very hard to manage.”

“The back end is built on something we call real-time messaging,” continued Leydon.. “It’s not a typical game server. We’re able to process all the actions incredibly quickly. We can handle over a million players playing together at once, there’s no other game in the world that can do that. It’s very complicated experience and it’s very hard to run.”

Once you understand how complicated Game of War: Fire Age is behind the scenes, it’s easier to understand why Machine Zone just has one game right now. As Leydon put it when Takahashi asked him about this, “Why doesn’t someone just do four World of Warcrafts ” Leydon noted that Machine Zone is currently staffed at about 550 people, “and frankly we are understaffed, we could use more,” he said. Leydon noted that they are opening a facility in Las Vegas and plan on adding a couple of hundred people in customer support.

“In 2011 you predicted user acquisition costs were going to soar,” Takahashi said. “How do you look back on that prediction ” “It’s kind of obvious, Leydon replied. “There’s $40 billion or so spent on brand marketing digitally on desktop. Currently only about 15-20% of that has moved over to mobile. You’re going from these very large screens that can show maybe eight to ten ads at a time ads down to these very small screens that can show maybe two. So there’s a ton of congestion when that $40 billion moves from a very large screen size down to a small screen size. There’s all this money coming from brands going to the mobile space and it’s going to cause tremendous inflation on the CPM cost. It’s been ramping up more and more, and you’ll see a lot this Christmas. I think by 2017 the majority of the digital spend will be on mobile, and mobile phones can’t support that many impressions. There’s going to be a tremendous amount of money fighting over a much smaller impression pool.”

Leydon noted the top mobile games on the list haven’t changed much in the past few years. “If you look at top-grossing let’s say the top 25 most of the apps are from 2012, there’s a few from 2014. I don’t think there’s any from 2015, at least in the US. There are in Japan and China. Game of War was from 2013, but I think the majority of them were developed in 2011,” Leydon said. “What keeps it there is the rapidly increasing cost of distribution. The early guys probably aren’t get as much traffic as they used to, but they have enough traffic to maintain where they are.”

Takahashi asked how important TV ads have been to Game of War: Fire Age‘s success. “I’m a big fan of Asian free-to-play, and if you look at them there’s a lot of celebrities involved in the marketing of these games,” Leydon said. He went on to explain why they picked Kate Upton as their initial spokesperson. “We were focusing on American football, and so we picked someone who was a five-time Sports Illustrated cover model. If you watch football you probably know who she is. We went out thinking we were just going to market on American football, and that was it.” Leydon admitted that they did the TV advertising “mainly just to see what would happen we weren’t sure how any of it would go.”

“TV is very interesting, it’s really hard to get right but if you get it right it can work,” Leydon continued. “But it takes an orchestrated effort across TV and digital. You can’t just do TV, you have to be really good on the digital side to make it work.”

Leydon reflected on how much impact TV has culturally, even though digital reaches more people. “Machine Zone has been big in the digital ad space for a while. Even though we were blasting out ads, I don’t think the general public knew what Game of War was,” Leydon said. “But as soon as you go on TV, people think it’s a brand, it’s really weird. Even though digital is way, way bigger than television, there’s just something that happens as soon as you go on TV it becomes a very big deal.”