Mark: It’s nearly 2027. Why has this taken so long?
Wes: Measurement is more complicated. A website is a flat page that people look at. In a video game, the view is constantly rotating, which makes viewability much harder to measure. The IAB just came out with in-game advertising standards, which is a step forward.
Mark: What still needs to happen before programmatic ads fully infiltrate video games?
Wes: The pipes still need to be built. Right now, programmatic partners will let you buy across titles, but not studio by studio or publisher by publisher. No big names have emerged in programmatic gaming ads yet. Unity has a great shot at it, and Roblox is interesting. There are a lot of people trying to tap this audience.
Mark: Entertainment companies outside gaming are moving in, too. What’s driving that?
Wes: Netflix and Amazon are spending a lot of money on gaming because they realize it is the next entertainment frontier. It’s already beating TV and movies in revenue and time spent.
Mark: What happens when the barrier to entry is just owning a TV?
Wes: Ease of entry is hugely important. The mobile phone is already the biggest gaming device by revenue, bigger than consoles. A prediction I love to make is that we’ll get high-fidelity games streamed directly to the TV, with your phone as the controller. The experience isn’t there yet, but that’s a technology constraint, not a desire constraint. Once it is, you can distribute entertainment in new and interesting ways, and that will be huge for the industry.
Pulled Quotes
“It would be more accurate to say that, through a series of by-now-unconscious reflexes engineered by large technology companies, this content just sort of happens to people, like a food-borne illness.”
Writer Daniel Kolitz, on microdramas
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“When Sherman was told that some war correspondents had been killed in battle, he said the correspondents would file from hell before breakfast.”
The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis, on launching a media newsletter
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“It’s like doing maintenance on a moving vehicle.”
Media executive Jeff Bewkes, on Paramount servicing its $80 billion in debt
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“I think you can have a very, very attractive, very profitable business that does not have to be an algorithm, sort of a mechanized panderer.”
Lupa Systems CEO James Murdoch, on New York Magazine
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