Advergaming
We turn a marketing campaign into a game
We create advergaming campaigns together with the marketing team: mini-games, scavenger hunts, challenges and more. It’s entertainment that makes your audience want more of your brand’s content, while boosting virality.
This makes consumers pay active attention to the product, sparking curiosity and positive emotions. In a world oversaturated with advertising, the result is breakthrough marketing.
What factors make good advergaming?
1. The audience
Every audience enjoys itself in a different way, and good advergaming is designed with its players in mind. The easiest audience is young consumers, who also deliver the best results with advergaming. That said, products aimed at older consumers can succeed too, by adapting the game’s mechanics, pace and tone.
Advergaming is especially effective in B2C models, where a specific product is sold to the end consumer.
2. Branding
A well-known brand carries an authority that greatly favors advergaming and leads to better results. It can also be used to introduce a new brand, but in that case the campaign’s goal will be brand discovery, not sales.
What sets advergaming apart?
1. It’s subtle
Advergaming doesn’t show how good a product is or list its virtues: it teaches users to appreciate it through in-game rewards and penalties. During play, users are rewarded for doing what the brand wants to achieve, which doesn’t have to be buying: it can be building healthy habits or learning about a specific topic. That’s how it improves brand image.
2. It has a secondary goal
Advergaming isn’t about showcasing a product or service, but about offering a recreational experience. For example, a coffee brand could create a gamified online quiz to find your ideal coffee based on your personality and tastes. It’s an entertaining quiz that ends by revealing a specific product from the brand, with a button to buy it in its online store.
3. It builds a connection with the brand
After watching a few-second ad, users stay cold and don’t buy. With advergaming, they live an experience they spend time on and end up feeling part of the brand. In the coffee example, users no longer see it as “just any coffee”, but as “the coffee that suits them best”. That sense of belonging makes them more likely to buy it, and not just in the moment: the emotion lasts, and they’ll remember it for days or weeks, which makes the sale far easier.
4. It conveys one emotion
Advergaming conveys strong emotions, which is why it needs a much sharper goal than traditional marketing. For example, a gym chain could create an advergaming experience about healthy habits that focuses on the consequences of not having them and not going to the gym, building an awareness that leads customers to sign up. Or, the other way around, it could show how your body could look if you go, creating a positive desire. Combining more than two emotions or goals dilutes the message: advergaming works best when it focuses on a single emotion.
Goals and measurement: advergaming KPIs
An advergaming campaign has two phases that are measured separately: promotion, which brings users to the game, and the game itself.
Promotion KPIs
The first contact with users is usually classic advertising (ads on social media, search engines or websites) inviting them to play. That’s why these KPIs belong more to digital marketing than to advergaming:
- CPC (cost per click): how much each click that takes users to the game costs.
- CTR (click-through rate): what percentage of people who see the ad click to play.
Advergaming KPIs
Once users are in, these are the KPIs that measure how the game itself performs:
- Participation rate: how many people start playing and how many make it to the end.
- Brand interaction time: how many minutes users spend playing, compared with the few seconds of attention an ad gets.
- Virality: how many times the game is shared and how many new players arrive through others.
- Leads and CPL (cost per lead): how many contacts the game captures and how much each one costs.
- Conversion rate and CPA (cost per acquisition): how many players end up buying and how much each sale costs.
- Brand recall: how well players remember the brand and the product days or weeks later.
The main KPI depends on the campaign’s goal:
| Campaign goal | Main KPI |
|---|---|
| Sales | Conversion rate and CPA |
| Capturing contacts | Leads and CPL |
| Introducing a new brand | Reach, virality and brand recall |
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