Solitaire stays a well-liked mainstay in app-based gaming – and it’s the subsequent frontier for cookieless promoting.
When Microsoft made the choice to discontinue its advert monetization SDK for video games carried in its app retailer again in 2020, Pubfinity Founder and CEO Sam Kaufmann noticed a chance to facilitate in-game promoting.
Kaufmann co-founded Random Salad Video games, a desktop-based sport developer for Home windows platforms whose titles embody variations of basic pc video games like Easy Solitaire. After Microsoft discontinued its SDK, Kaufmann stood to lose out on the advert income generated by his video games. He determined to launch Pubfinity as an SSP for sport builders like him who might not monetize their Home windows-based apps, which don’t use cookies.
Pubfinity’s curated portfolio now numbers greater than 100 video games.
However spinning up an SSP for desktop video games was an uphill battle. “Once we began to go on to DSPs to purchase our stock, that they had no thought who Pubfinity was, and we had plenty of doorways shut in our face,” Kaufmann mentioned.
Two years later, Pubfinity is hitching itself to Epsilon’s cookieless identification answer, Core ID.
“Epsilon noticed this was distinctive stock that nobody else was representing,” Kaufmann mentioned.
In any case, gaming audiences are usually extremely engaged and spend hours each week taking part in their favorites. And that’s as true for AAA sport titles as it’s for video games geared towards informal audiences, like desktop solitaire.
Epsilon acknowledged the desktop gaming SSP supplied high quality audiences and environments for advertisers, mentioned Briian Wilson, Epsilon’s VP of media acquisitions.
Advert tech integration
Pubfinity identifies one of the best placements for show and video advertisements in a writer’s video games, and it sells these placements by means of Epsilon’s Core Non-public Trade.
The partnership with Epsilon creates an optimized provide path to advertisers, with only a few hops between the promote aspect and the demand aspect, Kaufmann mentioned.
Epsilon’s Core ID interfaces with Prebid’s SharedID answer, which assigns a novel person ID to a person viewers member. That ID is handed by means of Prebid as a bid request to Epsilon’s DSPs. Epsilon can proceed to determine that person because the distinctive person ID makes its means by means of the Core Non-public Trade. This ID answer doesn’t depend on third-party cookies.
With higher identification indicators, patrons paid extra. When Pubfinity added the SharedID integration, income noticed a 25% incremental raise, Epsilon’s Wilson mentioned.
Epsilon’s Core ID answer and the mixing with Prebid improves transparency and accountability within the Home windows app surroundings, mentioned Pubfinity CRO Andre Sevigny.
“Quite a lot of normal advert tech for viewability measurement and fraud detection simply doesn’t work in an app surroundings,” Sevigny mentioned. “From the get-go two years in the past, we wished to unravel the cookieless drawback, as a result of there aren’t any cookies in Home windows apps and no unified ID like there’s on iOS and Android.”
Future plans embody the implementation of Epsilon’s PubLink answer to energy incremental raise even additional by enhancing match charges, Wilson mentioned.
Respectful advert expertise
Pubfinity was additionally drawn to Epsilon as a result of it introduced in a greater class of advertisers and supplied options to troubleshoot dangerous advertisements.
Epsilon’s tech stack permits Pubfinity to determine any advertisements that take too lengthy to load, improve latency, or in any other case have a damaging influence on the gaming expertise or stop an impression from being monetized, Kaufmann mentioned.
One other issue that drew Pubfinity to accomplice with Epsilon was the corporate’s steady of well-known clients, which informal gaming apps sometimes have a tough time attracting as advertisers.
Pubfinity believes it deserves these premium manufacturers. It hand-picks “respectful areas” for advert items and avoids any placements that might trick a person into clicking an advert or overlap gameplay. In Easy Solitaire, for instance, which means a 300×250 show advert runs within the higher left nook. Another video games have interstitial video advertisements.
“Pubfinity didn’t need something that might deter their viewers or appeal to plenty of buyer suggestions,” Wilson mentioned. “Over a 40-day span, that they had greater than 180 nationally acknowledged or internationally acknowledged manufacturers working throughout their properties” after integrating with Epsilon.
“Our solely actual rivals on the Home windows platform are individuals exhibiting person acquisition advertisements for different video games,” Kaufmann mentioned.
However exhibiting person acquisition advertisements comes with an enormous draw back: “Our writer companions are usually not thrilled about the concept the one means they will generate income is by rolling the cube and hoping that somebody doesn’t click on an advert to obtain one other sport and depart their sport to play it.”
Pubfinity nonetheless works in a guide means, hand-curating the apps and offering the tech and advert placements themselves, Kaufmann mentioned. However its present lack of automation labored in its favor to get the Epsilon partnership off the bottom. “Epsilon appreciated that this enables us to say you’re going to get a high quality advert placement regardless of which app it’s working in.”
