Next Wave Multimedia partners with Israel-based Anzu with the aim to bring advancement in blended in-game advertising for the second edition of their award-winning World Cricket Championship (WCC) franchise. The game will look to leverage Anzu’s blended in-game ad technology, bringing more opportunities for brands and advertisers in the Indian ecosystem.
Anzu will now bring to WCC2 ad viewability, brand lift measurement, audience verification, data enrichment, and fraud detection in partnership with industry leaders such as Moat, Comscore, Kantar, and Nielsen, in addition to native ad placements with blended in-game banner ads across the game on Android and iOS devices.
The native advertising format that this collaboration brings will help advertisers reach their audiences in a seamless manner, without disrupting user experience, while integrating a brand’s message in the game’s environment.
On the exclusive partnership, Next Wave Multimedia co-founder and CEO P.R. Rajendran said, “We are glad to be able to bring more value to brands. We believe this collaboration will help us serve users and advertisers better by taking gaming and digital advertising a notch higher for enhanced experience.”
Anzu’s CEO and co-founder Itamar Benedy remarked, “Every region is seeing a growth in gaming, and advertisers realise that in-game ads can help them connect with a once elusive audience. We are thrilled to partner with such a well-established studio and help them achieve their goals while opening up the in-game advertising market for advertisers across India.”
The APAC region has always had a record number of players, with the current estimate at 1.5 billion. Now that Anzu has inked a deal with AdColony’s APAC division, advertisers across the region will have even more access to gamers. AdColony country manager for India Amit Rathi noted, “Gaming has transformed from an underground pastime to mainstream entertainment, and it is rivaling the reach of social media. Advertisers need to take note of this and treat gaming as an equal if not a more effective channel for communicating with consumers. Placing in-game ads in games like WCC 2 will allow advertisers to reach their desired audiences.”
To help align in-game advertising with other media channels, Anzu has formed several strategic partnerships, including one with WPP to introduce in-game advertising standards. Through its affiliations with leading AdTech vendors, Anzu supplies in-depth measurements for campaign effectiveness and ad verification. It is these types of technologies that give big-name advertisers such as Vodafone, Samsung, and 7-Eleven the confidence they need to shift more of their budgets to in-game ads and game developers including Ubisoft, Toplitz Productions, and APB Reloaded the security to integrate ads into their games.