BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS

Arkadium Plays Next Level of the Ad Game
Thursday, July 30, 2009

Online games provider and partner to many magazine brands online, Arkadium, is crafting a more ambitious advertising strategy. The company announced last week its acquisition of branded game portal and maker Advergame.com; at the same time the company says it will start selling advertising into its network of 5 million monthly unique users of games across content partners and its own GreatDayGames.com gaming hub.

“Historically, we relied on [partners] to monetize the gaming traffic through traditional CPM display ads, and that market has collapsed,” says Kenny Rosenblatt, CEO, Arkadium. “We are trying to help publishers monetize their game areas better.”

Rosenblatt says that gaming inventory has already proven itself to be of high value to advertisers, both in video pre-rolls that precede game play and the wraparound banners and skins that stay in front of players as they game. “But the value is not as high as it could be because buyers are slapping pre-rolls anywhere they can put them without it being targeted.” He thinks Arkadium can monetize that space better than many of his clients. “Arkadium knows what gamers want. We don’t think the same pre-roll that worked on a news story will be as relevant as a pre-roll ad about something that is more behaviorally significant to the user.” He is proposing to use behavioral targeting as part of the mix and suggests that showing fewer and more targeted ads to users ultimately is more effective than a broad, untargeted approach. “We don’t think bigger is always better. I think if it is highly targeted and more relevant, if conversions and acquisitions are high, I don’t need to have scale of every American being in the database." 

Rosenblatt says that the client site will always have control over their inventory and can sell directly into the space itself, but he contends that in many cases his company will be able to come up with a better CPM they can share.

Rosenblatt says that most players of games at partner sites like AARP.org and GoodHousekeeping.com tend to play at those respective sites and not necessarily across his network. Sites can ensure loyalty with bonus points for return users and other techniques that keep them on a branded media games section rather than a general gaming hub like Pogo.com. “People feel connected to those brands.”

He says that gaming traffic across his network of site partners has risen 22% in the past year and 8% to 20% in just the last few months for many of his partners. Arkadium supplies games to scores of sites, including Publishers Clearing House, Cosmopolitan and ESPN.

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