Tag: experiences

Advertising & Marketing

Meta experiences ad glitch wiping out

Over the weekend, Meta experienced an ad glitch that caused advertisers to pay as much as twice their usual ad rates, according to CNBC. Advertisers reported paying thousands for ads that they claim no one was able to view. 

The glitch affected advertisers on Facebook as well as Instagram and caused advertisers to have to fork out more of ads, in some cases, more than they had budgeted for specific campaigns. 

In fact, complete advertising budgets were wiped out in a matter of hours, according to Retail News Asia while ads did not receive any more clicks than usual.

While a spokesperson from Meta has since reportedly confirmed that there was a technical issue, it denied that advertisers were charged exorbitant rates for ads that consumers did not see. 

Don’t miss; Meta updates ad priorities, FB and IG shops to take a hit from August

Rather, it explained that the issue resulted in “some miscalibration” for advertising campaigns that were focused on optimising for certain sales objectives. This resulted in faster campaign spending and more variable costs. 

Meta noted that it does not have evidence that it charged customers for “ads no one saw”. It added that if no impressions occurred, the advertiser would not be charged.

Typically, Meta’s ad systems work such that business can lay out a campaign budget for a certain time person and Meta will then control how much money is spent and when it is spent. Besides having access to metrics showing how well the ad did, advertisers are unable to see anything beyond that. Meta usually allows the platform to spend 25% over the daily amount budgeted by each business and claims that it does not have evidence of the glitch causing ad spend to exceed this.  

Meta has promised to carry out

… Read More ...
Advertising & Marketing

In the in-game advertising world, tension is mounting between intrinsic ads and immersive brand experiences

As brands increasingly look to reach gamers in their natural habitat, stakeholders in the gaming advertising world are coalescing into two camps: those porting programmatic adtech into games via intrinsic in-game ads, and those integrating brands into more immersive gaming experiences. As these two sides increasingly compete for marketers’ gaming budgets, the tension between them is mounting. 

Last month, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney caused a stir by coming down hard on in-game ads in a Q&A with Digiday. But for many executives and observers in the space, Sweeney’s comments disparaging in-game billboards came as no surprise; it’s a drum he has been beating for years. But despite Sweeney’s statements that he “hates advertising in games,” Fortnite is arguably chock-full of ads in the form of brand integrations, the equivalent of Hollywood product placement for gaming.

That isn’t to say that Sweeney’s comments didn’t come across as good sense to many marketers in the space.

“I agree with Tim wholeheartedly; I am almost 99 percent aligned with what he said,” said Brent Koning, the global gaming lead at Dentsu. “When you look at in-game advertising, just generally as an industry, there are some challenges. Candidly, we have just RFP’ed all of the major in-game advertising partners, and a lot of those platforms are saying very, very similar things.”

Still, while Sweeney’s points are fair, it’s hard to deny that they favor the work his company is doing over other companies’ efforts to integrate brands into games. The argument that Fortnite’s brand integrations are more seamless than other forms of in-game advertising ignores the higher barrier to entry of this format. Compared to intrinsic in-game ads, which can be placed programmatically inside game environments, bespoke branded game worlds and in-game items require more pre-development and consistent updates to be effective. And

… Read More ...