Audience

• The Programmatic Counter-Revolution: Why the Industry Needs to do its Bit to Avoid a Personal Data Backlash

  2 days ago News

  

  In this special contributed piece, Erick Fang, CEO of AI-driven ad platform Mintegral, considers the need for the programmatic sector to make the case for its responsibility, or risk imprecise regulation becoming the dominant governing force.   From time to time, I hear about a revolution in the online advertising business. Occasionally, I’ll listen in to conversations talking about how programmatic is up-ending the industry – changing ad buying habits, how consumers interact with adverts and transforming the industry with it. I do, [...]

• Ad Tech Spotlight Q&A: ironSource's Cross-Promotion Solution

  2 weeks ago News

  

  Mobile app advertising, monetisation and mediation outfit ironSource recently expanded its platform to offer a cross-platform mobile cross promotion solution. The distinct tech promises to offer a previously unseen approach not yet offered to mobile app developers and publishers by existing solutions. But just what does the new platform provide that is quite so different? And why has cross promotion historically been a tricky entity to perfect? We caught up with ironSource’s VP of product developer solutions, Nimrod Zuta, to find [...]

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• SkyWeaver dev Horizon Blockchain Games secures USD$3.74m (£2.97m) seed round

  4 weeks ago News

  

  Canadian game dev and blockchain infrastructure outfit Horizon Blockchain Games has completed a USD$3.75m (£2.97m) seed round. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s venture fund Initialized Capital led the round, which was also supported by Golden Ventures, Polychain, Coinbase, Digital Currency Group and Inovia Capital. The seed round is likely to be a significant boon to bringing Horizon’s game SkyWeaver to market, and to the further development of the company’s blockchain video game network Arcadeum, which is pitched as a ‘crypto arcade’. Backing by [...]

• ironSource debuts new cross-platform mobile cross-promotion solution

  2 months ago News

  

  Mobile monetisation and marketing outfit ironSource has launched a new cross-platform solution that enables mobile developers to manage cross promotion campaigns while utilising a suite of ad network capabilities. Available to those that use the ironSource mediation platform – which TheGamingEconomy has previously covered – the new solution promises to maximise the value of all existing users by driving the adoption of games from across a given developer’s catalogue of titles. According to a statement to the press, the new ironSource technology [...]

• Snap Games details real-time multiplayer focus for hyper causal Snapchat games

  2 months ago News

  

  As one of the dominant social platforms for teenage and young adult users, Snapchat is an obvious home for hyper casual instant games. That’s something the platform’s team are keenly aware of, it would seem, as a number of games have recently become available for Snapchat, each playable directly within the messaging service. Yesterday, for example, the internal Snapchat games division Snap Games released its seventh titlefor the platform, Bitmoji Tennis. The launch coincided neatly with Wimbledon, and continues the platform’s Bitmoji [...]

• NBA 2K19 and the 'unskippable' ads fiasco

  2 months ago News

  

  2K’s long-standing and wildly popular basketball game NBA 2K19 has in recent days been the subject of a flood of frustration from players unhappy with the premium title’s apparent ramping up of ‘unskippable’ ads. It appears some of that frustration may be partially unfounded; the ads may not be unskippable, and they have always been part of the game. But the momentum that has built in recent days has seen a lashing out against 2K’s use of ads – and that [...]

• Developers can now build Synative playable game demos in Google Play for free

  2 months ago News

  

  Game ad tech specialist Synative has moved to make its Playable Studio platform free for devs looking to build playable ‘Try Now’ demos for Google Play. In essence Synative offers in Playable Studio an accessible platform for building playable ads, all without the need to write a single line of code. Using that platform game developers – or their marketing or PR colleagues with little-to-no dev experience – can build demos of their games that exist as a playable ad. Those [...]

• E3: Microsoft reveals Xbox One successor, coming 2020

  2 months ago News

  

  With this year’s huge E3 gaming conference hardly underway, Microsoft has revealed that its follow up to the Xbox One console, announcing that the machine is due to launch in 2020. Code-named Project Scarlett, the coming console promises to be ‘four times’ as powerful as Microsoft’s current-generation Xbox One. Console ‘power’, of course, is too complicated to exist on a linear spectrum where all games machines are comparable using a single metric. But thanks in-part to a custom processor, built by Microsoft [...]

• Google confirms pricing structure, launch details and games for cloud-based Stadia gaming platform

  2 months ago News

  

  Google has moved to reveal more details on its eagerly anticipated Stadia cloud-gaming service; namely pricing structures, launch details and launch games. The gaming platform – due in November this year – requires no console-like ‘box’ or dedicated hardware beyond a game controller or mouse and keyboard. Instead, games will be streamed over the cloud direct from Google data centres to customers’ screens and controllers. Stadia will be available over smart TVs, laptops, desktop computers and smartphones. Users will access the [...]

• Panic, Playdate and the crank: A lesson learned in engaging the games industry

  3 months ago News

  

  The last two days have been a bumpy ride for Panic. The software company and occasional game publisher recently dazzled the global games industry by revealing its delightfully unconventional gaming handheld, the Playdate. Then the organisers of a modest gaming event also titled Playdate stated that they had received an email from Panic asserting that the former could no longer use the name. That has not gone down well. There is little unusual in companies moving to protect or claim brands. However, [...]