The Interactive Advertising Bureau has updated its guidelines for measuring the effectiveness of in-game advertisements and ads in the metaverse. The updated standards include many areas that bring the up to now slightly hazy measurement of ROI in metaverse ad spend at least up to par with methods use in the rest of digital media
The IAB, as a standards body for the game and ad industries, first took this action in 2009. As of then, a lot of the guidelines had to do with mobile ads that were fresh on the scene.
This uprated standard takes into account facets that entered the market alongside in-game 3D visuals for PC, console, mobile and VR games. The new guidelines point directly towards clearly mapping the advertising metaverse, a space where – potentially – all virtual worlds are interconnected and things get… rather complicated…
Vice president of IAB Experience Center, Zoe Soon said in a statement, “Gaming represents a huge opportunity for marketers. With 227 million gamers in the U.S. and over three billion globally by the end of this year, it’s a major entertainment channel, especially for Gen Z, the next generation of household decision-makers and spenders. We are updating the 2009 in-game guidelines to help marketers tap into this attention oasis and measure outcomes with confidence and transparency.”
It’s important to set such guidelines as part of creating the standards that make it possible for ad spenders to spend with confidence. Something thats absolutely essential if the metaverse is going to grow and expand as all the big players involved would like it to.
Big names aim to help big business
In a collaboration between IAB, IAB Tech Lab, and the Media Rating Council (MRC), IAB has released its Intrinsic In-Game (IIG) Measurement Guidelines to establish updated measurement guidelines for ads that appear within gameplay. The release is open for public comment for 30 days until July 15, 2022.
“With IIG, we will have viewability standards within in-game environments and guidelines for tracking impression measurement, display ad viewability, and invalid traffic, taken into account with various technical factors such as screen size, resolution, angle, and lighting,” said Shailley Singh, vice president of product at IAB Tech Lab, in a statement. “These will be important factors as we prepare to scale advertising in gaming and expand growth in advertising for marketers and their partners as they operate in a relatively new space.”
George Ivie, executive director and CEO at the MRC, in a statement, “Through the IIG measurement guidelines, we can now have greater consistency versus having vendors create their own rules for their measurements, which enables publisher and buyer trust as the industry works together to create a non-intrusive ad experience.”
The updated standards include many areas such as ad viewability, and measurement. For instance, every ad must be viewed for at least three seconds before it gets credit for being viewed. That’s one way to circumvent any fraud relating to viewing.
The updated IIG measurement standards:
- Re-examines the 10-second cumulative exposure duration for counting a valid impression including “sight, sound, and motion”, as well as 3D and virtual environments.
- Incorporates new advertising formats beyond two-dimensional and video as it relates to viewability within in-game environments
- Defines in-game measurement terms (impressions, reach/frequency, and engagement) to align with broader cross-channel measurement efforts.
The entire project is a joint effort between the IAB Experience Center, the IAB Tech Lab and the Media Rating Council, with considerable input from members of IAB UK and a task force of prominent in-game ad companies, brands, and agencies as well.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
