Lewis Buck
Sports Partnership Manager
Can you tell us in less than 100 words what your company does?
Bidstack helps brands and rights holders to dynamically reach gamers, unlocking a huge and valuable audience that is notoriously hard to reach.
Our sophisticated technology allows brands to serve advertisements into natural spaces within video games, whilst protecting the gaming experience. These branded experiences can vary from trackside banners, and cityscape billboards to pitch-side LED boards, skins or any other contextually relevant spaces within the metaverse.
We work with world-leading game publishers such as Sports Interactive (Football Manager), Codemasters, Take-Two Interactive and have delivered award-winning in-game campaigns for innovative brands, including Marriott Bonvoy, Paco Rabanne and Doritos, among others.
Who are your customers?
Bidstack works with a wide array of publishers, brands and media agencies to help them engage with our audience of almost 100 million monthly active users. We work across a vast portfolio of premium gaming inventory, which brands and agencies can purchase either directly or programmatically from our proprietary demand-side platform.
With the recent launch of Bidstack’s dedicated sports division, this audience now includes sporting IP owners and rights holders – extending traditional sponsorship opportunities into digital environments and bridging the authenticity gap that exists between real-world and virtual sports experiences.
Bidstack’s tools enable these brands to deliver highly-targeted content to relevant audiences at scale, transforming passive audiences into engaged fans and establishing ongoing complementary revenue sources.
What makes you stand out from your competitors?
Bidstack benefits from an extensive range of exclusive games partnerships with globally recognised AAA publishers and franchises available across mobile, PC, console and VR platforms.
The evolving portfolio of titles covers a diverse range of audience interests, enabling advertisers to communicate authentically with highly-targeted audiences at scale.
We also invest significantly in our best-in-class product team, who are constantly evolving and improving the solutions we provide for game publishers. Our proprietary technology hands control to our partners, who are able to monitor campaign progress, manage creative approvals, analyse inventory and track key performance metrics with live data through our user-friendly interface.
All of our tools are fully integrated with AdConsole, a proprietary self-serve analytics and reporting platform that enables both publisher and advertising partners to easily monitor and report on ad performance in real time across a range of relevant data points. Our tools aim to reinforce confidence within in-game formats, ensuring content remains safe, fraud-free and transparent to protect brand safety and demonstrate a clear return on investment.
What are the current trends in your business area, and how are they affecting how you work and how you deliver on strategy?
Global gaming audiences spiked to over 3 billion this year following significant growth during the global pandemic and adjustments in general entertainment consumption habits.
Audiences continue to express favourability towards gaming over traditional media formats, spending increasing amounts of time per day engaging with gameplay or related gaming content. This presents an increasingly valuable opportunity for innovative brands to engage audiences at scale, weaving branded messaging and identity into highly-visible virtual spaces.
Bidstack continues to work with brands to ensure that the growth of in-game advertising maintains consideration to protecting the wider gameplay experience, respecting the art form, whilst enabling publishers to generate sustainable and complementary revenue sources.
The metaverse also continues to be a popular topic of discussion, with varying interpretations as to what it truly constitutes. Advertisers continue to deliver ‘metaverse activations’ which typically utilise popular gaming titles or evolving technology such as virtual or augmented reality to deliver highly-engaging experiences for audiences.
Arguments around the definition of the metaverse aside, these virtual activations continue to deliver significant value for brands, weaving their identity into unique captivating experiences. Bidstack has continued to work in partnership with leading agencies and brands to deliver several first-to-market campaigns, including a multi-award-winning activation with Paco Rabanne, which saw audiences compete in a virtual reality training environment against sporting icon Tim Howard to win real-world prizes.
What challenges have you encountered?
The perceptions of gaming audiences amongst advertisers have historically been shaped around outdated stereotypes of gamers being exclusively younger and often anti-social males. In reality, modern gaming audiences are the most expansive and diverse among all other entertainment categories, comprising almost 50% female participation.
Bidstack continues to work with agency partners to educate advertisers by delivering insights and statistics that demonstrate the nuance of the vast gaming audience.
As gaming continues to advance as a recognised media channel, increased focus has rightfully turned to the standardisation of measurement standards for the various formats. Unlike traditional ad formats, which are primarily assessed by impressions and conversions, in-game advertising requires additional consideration due to the formats typically being non-clickable in an effort to keep integrations seamless and a natural part of the gameplay.
Bidstack has actively contributed to recently published IAB and MRC intrinsic in-game measurement standards whilst also utilising innovative solutions such as eye-tracking studies to understand how audiences truly engage with in-game content and the subsequent impact on considerations, including purchase intent and brand recall.
Bidstack works in partnership with Lumen Research, a specialist in eye-tracking and heat-mapping studies, providing advertisers with an independent and scientific approach to measuring the value of in-game campaigns.
