Last year, the in-game ad tech company Anzu helped American Eagle launch a virtual store in Roblox. The Israeli-startup also announced a partnership with NBCUniversal. The message seemed clear – Anzu and in-game advertising gaming was ready to go big.
But not every brand is ready to, or needs to, build out their own custom bespoke gaming activation, according to Itamar Benedy Co-Founder&CEO at Anzu.io.
“A lot of marketers don’t yet have a gaming strategy,” he told Beet.TV. Or they are asking basic questions such as “Where does gaming fall in the sense of different channels that are scaled today?”
It’s actually a lot simpler to get started than many brands realize, argued Benedy, and possibly more strategically sound to “crawl, walk and then run.”
In fact, for brands that are active digital advertisers, companies like Anzu enable them to extend current campaigns into gaming without much heavy lifting. Often they can use existing creative and employ the same programmatic partners they do every day.
We have all the pipes in place,” he said. It’s more around awareness of the capabilities that exist.”
Awareness and education are key, Benedy added. It helps to have the endorsement of a big, trusted player like NBCU.
“Things are definitely headed in the right direction,” he said.
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