Game publishers are facing challenges in ad monetization revenue amidst a privacy-first world. At Artifact, we're revolutionizing revenue growth while prioritizing user privacy by leveraging first-party data and innovative approaches like audience aggregation, linking, and matching.
Game publishers are increasingly plateauing on ad monetization revenue and effectiveness as the world is transitioning to a privacy-first world.
At Artifact, we are redefining how publishers can power revenue growth while embracing user privacy.
As third-party data loses its relevance, the growth of first-party data becomes evident. This has powered the meteoric rise of retail media ad networks like Amazon Ads, Uber Ads, Instacart Ads, Best Buy Ads, to name a few, underlining the strategic importance of possessing robust first-party data.
Building a similar ad network for game publishers, to help them command high CPMs comparable to Retail Media Networks, encounters obstacles due to the intrinsic nature of gaming - users primarily engage for entertainment without having a compelling need to provide data to the publisher. Despite this, various approaches are being explored to bring together fragments of data across publishers who may not have comprehensive first-party data:
Certain platforms facilitate some core capabilities by aggregating user data across multiple publishers. This aggregated data transforms into actionable first-party data, which the platform can use for User Acquisition (UA) and other purposes for each of those publishers.
(For a deeper understanding of this approach, refer to Eric Seufret's insightful analysis).
This is an interesting approach where a publisher links their audience data, with user consent, to another publisher that possesses richer user data. While the data is not shared between them, the linkage enables ads to be monetized at the higher CPMs that the ecosystem with the richer user data can command.
(An illustrative example is the recent ad partnership between Amazon and Facebook).
Publishers or businesses merge fragments of collected data through a "blind match" using data clean rooms. This approach has spurred the growth of vendors like Snowflake, and notable acquisitions in the space, such as LiveRamp's acquisition of Habu and Snowflake's acquisition of Samooha.
While these approaches help, they fall short of fully unlocking the potential of data and adhering to the true intent of privacy regulations—granting users complete agency over the use of their data. With impending regulations likely to impose further restrictions, a paradigm shift is imperative.
What if game publishers could unlock higher CPMs and drive truly effective UA by placing users at the center of the experience?
Artifact is blending all these approaches together with Zero-Party data, and collaborating with forward-thinking game publishers, to fully embrace user privacy while boosting ad CPMs and UA efforts.
