The Death of the "Impression": Why Interruption Advertising is Failing

I don't know if you've noticed. We are in an industry where everything is being pushed further down the funnel. You have a TV ad that has a QR code or you can click on your remote and shop right there. You've got social commerce where you've got people shopping from TikTok slides. You've got influencers that have affiliate links. We are literally, we have this kind of like baseline assumption that everything needs to be working like the conversion edge. Welcome back to Brands in Play, your podcast for everything immersive marketing. I'm Nick Hill, co-founder and chief innovation officer at Saw Horse. And there's no Al band this week because she is officially on maternity leave. So we'll be bringing in some awesome new guests, co-hosts. So for the month of February, I'm excited to introduce you to Aida Anderson. She's the head of commercial at Chartis. Aida has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world to help them activate across roadblocks, fortnight and other immersive spaces. Aida, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Nick. I'm stoked to be here and super excited to co-host with you for the month of February. Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. Lots to get through so if we can jump into this episode in the news, what are we covering? So this week in the news, we have Twitch launching blocks fest. Verizon turns Fortnite into a super bowl moment. Disney Plus releases the full high school musical film on TikTok. And Brands everywhere are hiring in-house storytellers to own the narrative. And for our real time review, I jumped into the premiere league's new Roblox experience, dribble dash. It's a football first game designed to meet fans where they're already playing. And later in the show, we're joined by Morgan Kalmisch, senior vice president, head of innovative experiences at Digitaz North America. That's right. We're gonna be talking about how brands show up in gaming, how strategy turns into execution, and what lands with creators and communities. So if you're enjoying brands in play, make sure to give it a follow. Every week we'll break down how brands, platforms and creators operate inside gaming, you just see platforms and immersive media. Let's get into it. Let's go. [Music] Aida, what's up? We finally made this happen. We did. I'm so stoked to be here. I can't wait for the month of February, which has never ever come out of my mouth before. Are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into? This producing the show and this level every single week is actually like a commitment. I realize that, but I'm ready. I'm ready to go. Yeah, I hope I don't let you down. I'm so excited to be here. I'm excited to talk to the guests. So, yeah, ready to dive into things. You won't let me down. I've been impressed with your past work and with the impact that you've made. So I'm really curious to add your POV to the show. I think listeners will get a lot out of it. So, stoked that you're here. And quick announcement from my side. I just want to let everybody know that we're changing our release day of the episodes. Normally, we release episodes every Friday morning Pacific Standard Time. We're moving that to Monday morning. So, if you're used to getting your episodes first thing on Friday, you got to shift that dynamic. But we're good to go on releases. And so, in general, I'm just excited for February. There's so much things happening. I feel like I'm just getting caught up from CES. What about you? Well, we're mixing things up here. I'm really excited at TARDIS. We just wrapped a super successful partnership with Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios for the newly premiered film, Mercy with Chris Pratt. Mercy. Yeah, Mercy with Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson, who's Swedish, by the way. And I'm Swedish for those who don't know me. So, that was really exciting. We integrated the film into our co-owned game, mini-game box PUP. So, that was great. Congrats. Yeah, it looks super dope. And that trailer looked awesome too. Yeah, I love the trailer. Thank you so much. All right. Well, let's keep it moving. Let's jump to the news. So, Twitch just announced Block Fest, which is a month-long Roblox-focused event running in February. It's marking their biggest push yet, I would say, into the Roblox category. Approved Roblox streamers can compete for a $300,000 price pool by streaming daily and earning points and qualifying for Twitch rivals grand finale. So, if you have viewers on the other hand, they can unlock exclusive in-game items, chat badges, and a global amount by watching during the event. I think this is super exciting. The way that they're approaching this and I can't wait to see in Pan out in February. Yeah, I was really stoked to see this. I mean, I think this is maybe the first example or one of the first examples where a very large social media platform is partnering with a big UGC gaming platform. To create an event together officially. I don't know. Have you heard about this happening before with other large companies? Not really, but if we think back to what Roblox creators did with RB battles, I feel like this is a similar approach, although much, much bigger. So, I'm really excited to see how this will resonate with the streamer's audiences and the Roblox players and everyone else too. It's a natural behavior that happened on the platforms already. This is just the two platforms themselves getting involved in making it official. So, it sounds like a very like native natural thing that's going to be successful. And I just feel like it's exciting because large companies are like backing it. And they're making it official. And I hope that they get the engagement numbers they want. I hope they it performs well because I want to see more of these sort of partnerships and collaborations in the future. So, next up in the news on my side is Verizon's eSport Fortnite content for Super Bowl. Did you hear about this at all? Yes, I did. I did. It's live wires involved, right? Yeah, exactly. So live wire put this on. It's called NFL Race to the In Zone Live powered by Verizon. And essentially it's a creator driven series where popular game creators and NFL players compete in Fortnite on a custom Super Bowl Verizon branded map. Did I get that right? You sure did. And I mean, we're seeing that pattern here again, brands tapping into that creator culture. I really see a like that is if we look at our news just blocks fest with Twitch and this to it's all creator focused. We're tapping into their communities and their culture. So what's like similar in both of these is that so the gameplay that's going to be happening inside of Fortnite is going to be streamed out into NFL YouTube channel. And then they're going to make all of these social highlight clips across like TikTok and Instagram. So what I love about that is it's like it's not only engaging with gaming culture natively, but then you're expanding it out across all social platforms. So no matter whether you're a Fortnite player or not, you're gaming adjacent, you're going to kind of experience what this campaign is. And apparently this is like this is the end part of this ongoing campaign that they've been doing for a while that I guess is driven over 100 million views. So that's pretty impressive, when she say, yeah, for sure. I mean 100 million views is crazy. And gaming is slowly or not even slowly. It's going quite quickly if you ask me, but it's moving into socials and you can see it across Instagram and TikTok and we have these kind of episodic takes on gaming also because if we have NFL race to the end zone. We're also getting that gaming aspect of it. And I think that's really, really interesting how they kind of play together both in a place or in a space like Fortnite and then on socials as well. Yeah, yeah. No, you're hitting it from both sides. There's like three takeaways that I really like about this piece. The one, you know, it's like a fandom bridge, you know, where if you're basically connecting this NFL fandom with gaming culture in like a very organic way. And it's smart for like the NFL to do this because, you know, they want to connect with younger audiences so they'd be that those younger audiences become fans and then the franchise, you know, continues. And I feel like the Gen Z and lower audiences, younger audiences, they're super hard to reach. So by doing this, it's like maybe some of them are sort of discovering football for the first time. So I think that's smart. And then also I love how they're integrating with like sort of traditional, like sort of social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Mainly for the measurement part of this so they can track the views, the impressions, the engagement of comments. And that's what these companies respond to. It's like it's hard to track measurement properly inside of gaming. So when you, you know, those reports come back to the company, it's often confusing. But if you can send them reports coming from something they understand, which is on social media, then making measure the campaign success by that. So I think they'll be able to do that just by the nature of this design. That's going to be, that's going to be huge, you know, being able to show engagement through comments, through shares. And then also the views paired with the gaming aspect and streamers and creators. It's This will really I hope this will set a new standard for for our industry Yeah, now it's a great model to finish And to wrap it up like I would just say that you know the the average cost of a super bowl Spot right because this is like sort of anchored around the Super Bowl They were to make a commercial to buy the airtime. It's between eight and ten million dollars Just for the time not the cost to even produce the spot or you know partner with the celebrity talent So as far as like getting more bang for your buck. This is I'm sure this is a fraction of that cost and the amount of engagement They're getting is extremely high. So I think it's just a really smart campaign. Yeah for sure for sure And then we're moving into Socials again, so Disney plus I really love this initiative. They release the full high school musical film on TikTok They cut it into 52 short parts for for the film's 20th anniversary And it's an adaptation that's driving huge attention and engagement by again meeting fans where they already consume content So what Disney plus did was they turned it into a platform native series It fueled nostalgia Discovery it renewed engagement and the play was really really simple here, but genius They repurposed existing IP into creator-nated formats We've built in retention through the episodic content and it ties into what we just talked about We have that episodic content. So we're getting viewers We're getting the audience to come back And I think what was so genius about this is they're really owning the narrative by publishing it on their own TikTok And they cut this film into several Several I was gonna say several pieces, but clips if that makes sense and we're all ready. It was as simple as that though They just took the whole feature film and they sliced it out into all these little bits and then they kind of wove it together So you've kind of follow it Yeah short snackable pieces over time Exactly and in order to see the entire thing, you know, you you do have to go into Disney plus own channel To see it's a really really smart move and it's You know a great way to drive traffic to your own page Something that recently happened was Nickelodeon also shared the entire first season of SpongeBob square pants on Instagram But what they did was they yeah, they shoved it all the entire season into a 30 second clip So kind of the same, but it's not the same at the same time But I think it's really really interesting what they're starting to do Yeah, no, it's this is super smart. It's also super simple, you know, there's nothing like revolutionary happening here But they're it's just very smart. I'm sure it's massively effective. So I think we're just gonna see more of it. Yeah I think so too. Well last story for our new segment here is all about how brands are hiring in-house storytellers Has this been on your radar this whole shift of like brands like moving into content? Yeah, for sure. I mean it's something that we're We've started seeing more and more and especially recently I feel like it's like I just everywhere I look there's a headline that's just talking about how there's this shift happening And so this what I'm reporting on here is just basically having read several of these and sort of been taking a pulse on the industry It's essentially companies across tech retail finance and compliance are increasingly hiring for roles explicitly titled storyteller or narrative lead and so you know We're talking about like Google Microsoft gap fanatics and then storytelling as a senior function responsibility For shaping how the company is understood across marketing comms product and culture And like linkedin release this report basically saying that the term storyteller has doubled in us job listings year of year So it's just an indicator that like brands are really focusing on the narrative, you know It's like narrative is now strategy in itself and they want to own that narrative and not just produce commercials That are like here's a one-off representation of me but just having this always on Very open very clear basically story. It's like it's an unfolding story and conversation that you have with your consumers It's super exciting because that ties back into the news stories that we just talked about with Disney did what And a felon Verizon is doing, you know, they want to own that narrative just like you're saying It's it's really really interesting seeing this shift happen or not shift but it's movement Yeah, it's like it's it's a focus, you know It's a it's a big focus area and one of the things that I picked up in one of the articles is just talking about how AI has raised the bar So like generative AI is like flooding the market right now And there's like this fatigue happening and more and more people just crave like a human story And I think that those brands that can kind of latch onto those human stories Are going to be like a differentiating factor when there's so much garbage sort of marketing noise that's like flying around these days For sure for sure I mean I'm actually going to tie tie something back to that a little later in the show But I think that is definitely something that people need to keep in mind with all of this going on with AI That humans are still needed for that creative aspect then Creating narratives around a brand or a campaign or whatever it may be, you know Yeah, agreed. I mean there's this I just I get so frustrated like scrolling on LinkedIn these days When so there's some little technological advance That pops up around You know a new model or a new thing you can do and then someone posts something that looks visually stunning And they say oh, it's the death of an industry and you're like No, it's like it's such an oversimplification. I'm like I'm just getting tired of it It's like obviously it will be changing the industry and how we function, but it's not like Things are it's it's not like a one size fits all ever so I don't know I'm just can we just stop talking like that on Blake Den place I echo that I echo that 100% All right, well, let's move on. I think it's time for the real time review All right, so for this week I will be talking about the premier leagues Roblox game dribble dash Are you familiar with this one? I eat it. I am I've had a look at it, but let's look at it together, you know, so it's new came out just recently If we're context for those US listeners the premier league is England's top professional football league and that's what we call soccer in the United States But they call it football the rest of the world calls it football the rest of the world we call it football Yeah, so let's we should pick that up So what essentially is happening is they directly launched this game themselves So this is not from like a third party or a brand. It's from the the League itself and what they created on Roblox is an obstacle course Sort of obvious style football experience So you can dribble a football through this training ground and onto the stadium You can do it solo or you can do it with other people and sort of a co-op mode when you go in there the the art is all sort of Customized for the league. There's lots of soccer visuals. It looks pretty cool It's definitely on brand and once you're playing the game You essentially have to avoid these obstacles. That's the obi side That's the challenge like how do you get around this stuff and not die get to the end So there's this built-in sort of core loop where you have to push yourself to go through it You can unlock coins you can unlock trophies and then test your skills How fast can you do it? There's leaderboards and that's sort of like the the design of this game Also the brand it has plans to evolve the game over time all the way through the 25 26 season the good Side of this that I noticed is that um, you know, they did choose to go with an obi This is a game type that works on the Roblox platform We know that activating on these platforms if you don't create something that is natively already happening there It's hard to get adoption So they were smart into leaning into those trends that that do work Also, it's pretty much accessible for all ages. It's simple intuitive like football mechanics So they don't require like super hard hardcore skill It's a lower barrier to entry So basically players of all ages can jump in and like pick it up very easily I'll also note that the branding is as well Kind of translated into into the space, you know, it's not hitting you over the head. It's not like Intrusive. It's not like ugly the way they weeded it in is is fun to look at and play so I'll give them props for that And also I saw some Puma logos kind of worked in because then there's partnerships with them which was cool and then you know like having this Commitment this season long roadmap of updates, you know a lot of brands come to these platforms They launch an experience and they hope that it's going to be amazing forever But if you don't keep adding to what you built it will just decline into nothing So the fact that they're already being proactive about updates is pretty smart Now the bad This is my point of view I think that the Abbey mechanics than the obi game design is a little oversaturated on the platform. There's a lot of amazing hobbies made by some of the best Roblox devs in the world. So when you build an obi game, you're competing with all of those other games that might be better or might have more resources or a stronger dedicated team. And on the platform like Roblox, everyone's competing for attention. There's so many things to do. So that's a challenge, which they will hit. There's also limited depth, you know, there's not that many maps and obi challenges. So, you know, once a player completes a lot of this stuff, they're going to be looking for the next one. So as far as the content standpoint, they need to really, if they're going to be successful, really kind of double down on this live ops updates. And I, you know, I'll have to ding it slightly just because the stats aren't great so far. Had a pretty low CCU lifetime visit of only 140,000 at this point. The session length is a little low, 3.5 minutes. And it got dinged kind of hard on its rating. It's at 46%. So it's a kind of below sort of branded benchmark standard. But the big thing that I'll sort of critique here is that they are up against the owned experience challenge. We talk about on this show of like ways that brands can activate. They can, you know, build something from scratch and own that experience as a own channel where they can do an integration. That's sort of like the a b that you can pick. There's pros and cons to both. When you go into an integration, it's temporary. You go into someone else's game. You capitalize on all their traffic immediately. So you get a lot of engagement, but it's shortly lived. And then they pull you out of the game. On the own experience, you have full control over everything, but you have to attract an audience from scratch. And that is a big challenge. So that is what they will be faced with as they sort of invest and own this channel over time. They're going to have to figure out how to keep it fresh and keep curating it and keep trying to attract audience. And I'll just flag something parallel that the NFL did is they partnered with Voldex when they wanted to come to the platform. And what Voldex did is they acquired the top football game on the platform. And then they basically reskinned it with NFL to improve the game. And it has a pretty massive, you know, engagement, like lots of CC use, lots of users. And that was just a different strategy for how to come to the platform. But overall, you know, was it innovative? I would say it's not particularly innovative in the sense that we've seen these obvious style football games. There's many of them. But I will say that it is innovative in the sense that it is cool with a large organization, like the Premier League decides to have an always on owned channel on on a platform like Roblox or Fortnite. It again, a bit of an uphill battle, but I think this is the future of where things are going. Brands are going to want to have these always on communications with these, with the, you know, the audience inside of these platforms. And a one off integration isn't always going to solve that. Having an own experience and having to constantly attract people is also a challenge. So, you know, there's pros and cons to all of this, but I do want to give a shout out and props to the Premier League for going in. And, you know, I wish them success. What are your thoughts? I agree with you. And I think we're going to see more brands that want that persistent presence on these platforms. I think there's a huge opportunity for sports brands in particular because they have so many sponsors. And if they're able to create a space, like the NFL did with Valdex, you know, they're able to do, if we're going to use traditional marketing, lingo, product placement in there. Yeah. So if they're able to turn the current stats around through live ops, listening to the community and really building on that progression and what players want, they could potentially have a space where they're able to integrate partners and provide them with new audiences, which is the goal, right? When, when I think sports organizations do something like this. So, you know, I'm rooting for them. I hope that this will be the case. Because I want, I want this industry to grow. I really believe that this is the future for, for, you know, digital marketing. Yeah, I agree. I, I feel like it's a, nobody's cracked the code and there's not one clear blueprint yet. But I do see these platforms being hugely helpful to these large sports entities and individual teams to like, haven't always on connection with younger audiences. And it'll be, it's, it's like leaders like this that are, you know, pounding the pavement and like being the early movers and doing the testing and the learning. So yeah, I'm also bullish on it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for that, Nick. I think it's time to go to our interview now with senior vice president head of innovative experiences. App did does North America Morgan palmish. Let's go. We're stoked to have the SVP of innovative experiences at Digitas North America. Morgan Palmish on the show today. She's a strategist with over a decade in advertising. Her work centers around how technology shapes the way people experience, engage with and make decisions about brands across her career. She's worked with iconic brands like Sephora, Ford, Meow Mix, Chlorox, Crocs, Visa and a ton of others. I first met her at Seg3 in LA recently. And I knew she would be great on brands in play. So Morgan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Glad we could take an IRL connection into something meaningful. Love and that happens. Yes. And it's great when you go to these conferences and you actually make good connections and turn them into future stuff. So we're here. First question for you. So you are the SVP of innovative experiences at Digitas. How do you define an innovative experience? And why should brands even care? Great question. And when I was doing the work of defining my own title as I carved out my little niche in the innovation space, a lot of that went into why we were calling it what we did. And so innovative experiences to me are about how people are interacting with the brand through the lens of technology. And previously, I kind of used the word emerging technology, but that started to feel less and less right. The more mainstream things like AI and gaming, right, those aren't emergent anymore. So innovative experiences really just helps capture that wider net. And we're looking at any of the ways that are changing how consumers are transacting, how they're expressing themselves, how they're making decisions. And so a lot of what I do is just around how can we help brands better show up and knows more innovative ways on how they're experiencing the brand from a consumer perspective. So why would a brand care? Yeah, a brand should care because consumers are not stagnant. There are always going to be new ways that we are going to find consumers out in the world and how people behave as always shifting. So if we had just stayed put in the you know, 1950s, we'd be looking at billboards and TV ads. So the immersive experiences to me are just like the next evolution of how people are connecting with each other and thus should be a place where brands are finding places to connect with consumers. Well put, I think I couldn't agree more with you. So if we look at that like roadblocks, fortnight, minecraft, etc. Do you think that these are good places for brands to advertise on or or not? Have you seen those game advertising spaces shift? Yeah, I would say not if you think about traditional advertising. So if we'll go go here, I'm sure today our whole theme is going to be about measurement. So I can't wait to just get into the get into the weeds on this one, but they are good places for brands. But not if you hold them up against some of the metrics that you might look at for things like efficiency around if you're trying to get a lot of impressions or you're trying to get a lot of clickthroughs to a website, maybe not. But if brands stop thinking about it as a traditional advertising channel and think about it as being like a designer of an experience and and stop saying things like, how can I can I use gaming as a place that I can be seeing? And instead saying like, can I use gaming as a place that I can add value in an interesting way? Then 1000%. It is a good place for a brand to advertise and I just keep coming back to this idea of like connection. It's not just about sending a message out to the world, but connecting with consumers around your brand in a different way. Yeah, that's I love that. You know, what do you how do you approach when brands come to you and want to be in gaming? But don't really have any concept of like what that means. Like for instance, like when they come to you and they're like, I don't know my CEO's son plays Roblox and we got it. We got to be in Roblox, right? Like how do you as approached that? First of all, that's exciting. I don't want to like dump on brands who ask that question because we want more brands to be asking that question. right? But on the other hand, it is a bit starting with the wrong question. And I've been through several eras of this already. If you think all the way back to like 2011, 2010, 2000, that era, I remember working on one of the big automotive companies and we were trying to answer the question should we be on Snapchat? Okay. And this feels like we're in a similar era and we did it again for four or five years ago when we were asking about the metaverse. We are we are starting with the wrong question, which is not like the channel that that's a tactical question to say, start here. Should I be here? I think you should always start with what it is that you're trying to solve for. So if a client is looking to form a deeper relationship with a certain consumer, a younger consumer maybe and a Roblox type environment and they have a product that is worthy of some level of consideration. It's not just like a thing you don't think about when you buy. Maybe that would be a good thing for you to do is explore gaming, but not every goal is going to require you to do something in an immersive space and not every audience is going to connect through gaming in the same way. So I love that it is a question. I don't always think it's the right question to start with to answer something strategically. And then of course, we get into the problem of like saying you should be in gaming is almost like saying you should be on the internet at this point. Like it is such a broad thing to say. So that's like part one of my answer, but would love to hear how you guys feel about that. Yeah, I mean, I feel the same way. It's like I always want to back the conversation up so far and ask the question is like, well, what is the goal? Like first of all, what is the goal of your company? Like let's start there. And if you're going to be inside of gaming, how can that tie back to the what your company does and what it needs? And then it's like, maybe it isn't real blocks. Maybe it said you should just be in mobile games. Exactly. When you're in integrations or something, who knows? But yeah, it's we always get in that boat where this one where the marketing team is already so far down there like we have to have a fortnight map. And like we we were a golf company. It's like, okay, I'm not sure. Like can we can we back it up a little bit? Maybe there's some other options here. Yeah. And that becomes the second part of the challenge for for us, right? As as people who are connecting brands into the spaces, how do I translate your brand story into an experience that's going to feel native to that environment? And if you're starting too far along, you've already done yourself a little bit of a disservice on how how big that sandbox can be. Gaming is huge. There are so many ways we can do that. But if you're already saying it has to be here, that limits how you can start to translate that story in an interesting way. And I think that's where it feels different from when we when you ask the first question around compared to traditional advertising, it's like, in traditional advertising, you've kind of just got a message. And you know, of course, in social, you want to translate it into the language of social, but it feels like a bigger ask in gaming a bit because of how many different ways you can make that happen. And you limit that when you start too far down the process. I think that ties really in well into my next question for you, which is generally like most immersive experiences are giving consumers value of some sort. And then most traditional advertising does not. How does gaining something change the value of an ad? Like, is it better or is it just different? Yeah. What do you think there? I love that idea. I think there's something powerful not only in what you're talking about around value, but also not interrupting, which is a big component of this so much of traditional advertising is reliant on getting attention because you're interrupting them from something they're already doing where gaming is kind of asking a different thing of consumers. It's not like change what you're doing. It's, hey, we're here. And ideally, if you're talking about the lens of value ad, right, we're going to give you something that makes it even more fun or different or add something to that experience. So it's a big difference actually. And I think it's really powerful. I would also say it's directly tied to so much of what we think about from like a behavioral economics perspective around like the psychological ownership that comes from feeling like you have a stake in using something. It's like the same thing is when you go to a store and when you touch something you're more likely to buy it. The same idea in gaming. It's like you're engaging with it in this bigger way. It's firing up all these things inside of your brain. And there's no way that that can't be better than going by and seeing something for a blip and then kind of moving on with my day. Yeah, I love that. I think about that a lot because it's like you're engaging with different areas of your brain. You know, like most ads like we see and we like kind of take it in. But when you're in a gaming environment, you're using all you so many senses and you're so focused. And then if if a brand is somehow engaged and it doesn't take you out, it's not like a pop up. It's actually ingrained. There's a lot happening upstairs with the way that message gets kind of more deeply seated I would say. We're sure and that's beyond I know we were talking about we're talking a lot about gaming today, but the same thing's true when you think of many other types of immersive experiences, whether it's consumer facing, I've done some things for even like internal employee trainings around instead of just using a handbook. What if we put it into augmented reality and got people to really experience things in a new way that's that's firing up your memory in such a different way than just seeing something in one dimension. I love that. Well said. But let's move the conversation over to what we really came here to talk about like measurement. And I have to we'll just start you know from the basic side of this like how is success traditionally measured on you know, inside of advertising today. So like TV billboards, social media, what are those measurement factors that the whole advertising world has agreed on? And then can we take those same metrics and apply it to gaming and interactive experiences or not? Yeah. I would say back to the idea of interruption. You are looking at a set of metrics that are there to answer the questions of did people see us like did we get their attention? Did they remember what we said? Like did they did they take away the right message? And then ideally did they do something after that? So what type of action did they take? And I think fundamentally those are still the same questions we're answering in gaming. But if we used the same metrics that were there as far as like looking at did we disrupt them? Like did did we get eyeballs? Did we get impressions? Did we get like a video view right? There's a lot of those metrics that are interruption based metrics. I think we're now looking more at experiential metrics. So you're answering the same questions, but you have these things that are more based on experience. So did you come back like in this experience? Did you make a choice to come back? It's not what you see it a few times. It's did you engage with it and then engage with it again? That is so strong of a tell around intent and preference for a brand compared to how many times I was exposed to an ad. Yeah. And also it's they're opting in. Yeah. It's a choice to come back. It's not just that you know what other advertising are you choosing exactly? You consume, you know? Exactly. So I mean, it's not that the concepts are fundamentally different. It's just that the metrics and signals that we have to deliver on whether we got their attention, whether or not they took an action, whether or not they understood our message are going to look very different. I think so too. I mean, looking at that then, what is the hardest mindset shift for clients or that they need to make when evaluating success in gaming? Like how early does measurement shape creative decisions in immersive campaigns? Ideally, very early, right? Like that's some of Nick what you were talking about where don't don't start me out with just I want to be in gaming start me out with like these are the things that I want to do. I want to be really, really cool with this audience. I want this audience to think of me in this way or or I want my brand to build its awareness with this audience. And so I need to get more people to be thinking about my brand in this way kind of thing. So start starting with that is crucial because all of those past create a different outcome for where you go with gaming, right? Like if it's important for you to have a place for gamers to be with you all the time, maybe you want to be building some sort of evergreen experience in Roblox, but that's not right for every brand. And that's a big choice, a big investment choice, a big ongoing investment choice. If you're saying I actually really just have this big moment around this thing happening with my brand at this point in time, maybe it makes sense for you to dip a toe in in a different way. Maybe you're going to drop some really interesting UGC around that moment. Maybe you're going to go do an integrated with somebody in Fortnite created that you can kind of come in and come out on. Those are all driving decisions that you should be making. So like the first part of that question, my answer is like big time. It should really affect you should set those goals early so that you have a clear direction on how you want to take things and it makes our job much easier as we're trying to be that translator of the brand's story and how it shows up. But then the second part of that question around the mindset shift. You've got social commerce where you've got people shopping from TikTok Lides. We are literally we have this kind of like baseline assumption that everything needs to be working like a conversion engine. And that isn't to say that gaming and like immersive environments can't also do that because I do think they can do that. And I think we can talk about at some point today around like you can maybe look at things like are you getting more search volume are people coming to your to your site more frequently of course, but it is most likely going to be slower. It's going to be less linear and definitely less efficient than some of those other channels and that's not bad. It is just different and I think when you talk about what is that barrier what is that mindset shift that we need is think about gaming as like the force multiplier for conversion, not the big conversion channel. And I think that's we can get into a lot more detail too around why that's a challenge around how organizations are structured. But that at its core I think is an issue that we're seeing. Yeah, I think everyone wants that bottom of funnel conversion and you want that attribution at the end of the day like if you're just like looking at the bottom line you're like I spent how much on the thing and then we got how much because of it because if you can look at that on paper, you're like great. So we're going to put our ad dollars there and I think you can kind of do that with a lot of ad tech products that we're seeing in social media for instance, you know even more so than traditional. But we're not seeing that in gaming often because most games are walled gardens. You know, especially the big UGC gaming platforms like Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, these are full walled gardens that don't allow it like almost any deep linking of any any kind you can't even with it within terms of service you can't message the player to go off platform to buy a product to go to any URL. So like what are your thoughts on that I mean I feel like if you're if you're working advertising and you really care about performance marketing and you need to draw that attribution line it's almost impossible to do that. I think it's going to be one of the biggest barriers to the success of gaming for brand marketers like I think connecting the funnel in better ways and the closing that measurement loop is going to be so big and I know we're actually probably going to talk about this next. But when I think about like Roblox, Fortnite like they do a really good job was in environment engagement like we already know a lot of things about where people are spending time what they're choosing to opt into. But then when it comes to closing that loop compared to something like a social channel right we don't have that really clear. There being room style like connection of of the story and so it's it's not totally seamless it's not totally standardized and I really hope we can find some ways to get there and the next couple years because I think when that's unlocked we're going to see exponential growth. I totally agree and I have no idea when that's going to happen because obviously people want to keep that wall garden if they can but let's go a little bit deeper into the measurement question about like how should brands what should they really focus on as far as valuable metrics when it comes to measurement I think like let's say you're a brand and for the first time you activated on Roblox and you got some certain sort certain data back certain numbers might really surprise you and make you happy others you might not care about. But really if you study the space and understand some some metrics matter way more than others like one example would be. You know visits versus dwell time if you had you know 20 million people visit your experience that's a lot but they're all spending five seconds or less in the experience they kind that's not really working right they like they jump in there like what is this I'm out of here right so it's like if the dwell time is on average so low that's a problem so. Here's to get your take on like what if you're a brand what sort of data would you really want to be tracking and what do you value more than others interesting because when we started the discussion about like traditional advertising metrics I think those tend to be the least impactful and interesting when you go into these spaces so like to your exact point is it cool that millions of people came in like maybe. Did those millions of people then they saw it they knew you were there that's great but what what did they think and that I want impression did you make on them yes that it's like the next part of the question did you come back to it did you take some sort of like opt in behavior did you go out in the world and invite a friend did you talk about it did you share content around it. I mean I was just talking with overwall last week and we were talking about mods and just like yeah there's such an advocacy layer to gaming that I find very interesting of yes of course we have advocacy in the sense of people share things on social media I can't often remember the last time I shared something like a branded ad but I see tons of times where people are out in social channels talking about hey I just did this cool fun thing in this branded experience or I. Quite literally walking around with a piece of a retail clothing item on my my players body representing that brand everywhere I go and those to me are much more interesting metrics to be looking at and of course it's going to be unique experience to experience because the metrics you're looking at. And if you're talking about like a bespoke branded game are going to be very different than if you're just talking about like rewarded video or something like that but I would say again just a lot of what you already go to Nick it's not just the it's not just the what it's like the how it's that richness around it that tells a better story then just like people came people saw it's like you're missing like the people do right and the people care yeah and the people care people love I think yeah I think that is like one of the key things you're really bridging into what you know we want to ask you next here is even though there are so many great case studies for successful gaming and immersive marketing campaigns just like you just mentioned with all the stories why does it still feel like we're living in the test and learn innovation space like why aren't more brands advertising constantly why why please tell us I need to know this answer it is multifaceted I think we hit on a big piece of it already like I don't think brand still are afraid of gaming I think that the industry has done a fantastic job to your point at the beginning Nick like people know there are billions of people here people know their audiences here like they're not doubting that but they have a lot of fear around the things that they can't forecast that things they can't attribute when somebody gets into a CMO conversation and they have an Excel spreadsheet that they're asking how much did I spend and what did it do for me right like we are looking at marketing organizations that are built to reward outcomes they're not going to be able to do that they're not they're not rewarding behavior and so I think that part part of it is big I think the secondary part of that is it's still a little unhoused like it took some time for us to build social organizations within marketing structures so like you have a social team now who like know this space a lot of the hot time you have that same course but it used to be the just a gem it used to be the intern yeah yeah like who does our social it's this person we don't care about that makes nothing yeah some scrappy person that like knows the space like oh they're young and hip and like get it so like they should do it I think gaming is tough it sits at the intersection of a lot of things it's it's product it's media it's it's social like so people don't really know where to put it it doesn't live in like a clean column and I think it's going to take us some time to build the structure around it so like is it always going to be an innovative experiences person or eventually is there going to be a gaming in some organizations already is like there's there's your gaming person but I don't think that that has been adopted at the macro level and that's so there's like two pieces kind of working together to make a challenging yeah totally agreed like in the media mix and media teams like gaming is still kind of like maybe you have somebody maybe you don't you probably don't and it's not a consistent marketing channel yet for most brands I would say I think that's right unfortunately unfortunately but please be my next question you know if you had to just pinpoint one issue or one thing that brands do not understand about game marketing. What is that thing? That's so hard to do one thing. I don't want this to be like the thing that I'm leaving behind with the world. But I would say it's just that people are lumping together digital engagement as one behavior. They look at the fact that you are on a computer or on a device and that's like digital engagement. And I think that type of thinking is very limiting. And when you start to lump it together, it breaks your brain a little bit on the metrics thing. It breaks your brain on how you show up. And so I think that that is something that they don't all understand. And we actually talked about this on our prep club for this next, but it's intimidating to figure out if you're not in it. It's easy to download Snapchat. It's easy to download Instagram and TikTok and scroll on it. So we can say that you shouldn't lump them together, but I don't think people get it until they can immerse themselves in the space. And it's a little bit of a higher barrier of entry to immerse yourself in it. If you don't have kids, whatever it is, like if you're not into it, people go, I'm not a gamer. And it's like, that's okay. That's okay. Yeah. It's a big barrier to entry, right? Yeah. I've worked with so many different brands where like we're building something and we're like, here's the link, jump in. And they're like, I don't know how to move the avatar. And you're like, well, you just use the thumbs like it's hard. Try it. But it is like if you didn't grow up gaming, it's cut is very foreign. So like I understand how complicated it is to be adopted quickly. For sure, but we also need to get out of that mindset because I always use the example of how I have my careers gone down the toilet because I've worked on things like drain cleaners and toilet paper and all sorts of things that I'm like, I never really knew much about that. I'm not the consumer for some of these. It will obviously toilet paper. I'm a consumer for, but like I was doing like conversations with people that are like professional plumbers, right? So out of my comfort zone, so not something and so much of our job as marketers is to be comfortable putting ourselves into the shoes of consumers who aren't like us. And so I think we need to make sure that we're not just getting fear mongered by gaming and and do a little bit of the work to put yourself into into like a gamer shoes. I went on Roblox before when I first started working in this space, I hadn't done much in Roblox. I went in. I was like playing with my little cousin. I was getting my butt handed to me on the regular, but you just got to put yourself out there and do things that make you uncomfortable and try it. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I think like we've touched on what platforms like Roblox and Fortnite, what they have to kind of unlock in the future in order to get brands to commit even more. But looking ahead, how do you see the space changing, you know, within the next couple of years with all of this in mind? I will choose to take an optimistic perspective because I feel like we've done enough of our challenging conversation on the call. I would like to think that and I'm going to take this through the lens of marketing. Like I hope that the idea of immersive experiences, I don't want to be called like innovation anymore. Do you know what I mean? Like I want to be a core part of a strategy. And I think it's possible because when you look at what's happening culturally, like the way people are engaging is shifting. We are not in just a watching world anymore. We're in a participating world. And so people are expecting to be able to shape the things they're doing to engage in their own terms. And like when consumer expectation shift, like marketing has to shift and meet or hopefully exceed those expectations. And so like my wish is that we will talk about this in a couple of years and we'll say we're so happy. Everybody's done all the work on building the right teams around it. We've got the big companies who are building us these models that help us better attribute the things we're doing in this space. And now we've got this thing that we can't even call, you know, it's innovation anymore. It's just a core part of marketing and what we do. Yeah. And that's Nick and I. We've talked about that before. I think that's really where we want to end up, you know. And brands taking approaches activating on, say, Fortnite or or Roblox and then pairing that with social media content. I think a genius way to do it is meme-led content. Yeah. And then being able to pair that new, what we're calling right now, innovative, those those type of metrics together with more traditional measurements. I mean, that will kind of be a pathway into where we want to end up right. So yeah, I agree with you and I hope that we that's where we'll be within, you know, a couple of years from now. Not quite a hot take, but a dream. Yeah, it's an optimistic hot take, you know. But what I love to what you said is like you want to move this out of innovation and I fully agree with you at this point. Like, there's still new stuff like new platforms and new type of behaviors, but gaming itself is not innovative. I had the NES back in 1983 when it came out. So like we're talking about gaming is an old ass thing and we should stop putting it in the innovation bucket as marketers like look at this space to be like, we're going to do something crazy. Guys, we're going to attach what we're doing into a game and has anyone played a game before the answer should be like, yes, we all have like five on our phones right now. Like what are you talking about? Right. If you have a LinkedIn, you've probably played a game. I'm hooked on those LinkedIn games. Facebook games too. Facebook games. Yeah, they're everywhere. Everyone's a gamer. Well, Morgan, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a really insightful conversation. I appreciate your, you know, your POV on the space and the work that you're doing at Digitas and we're just excited to you. You know, make sure that your points were kind of shared with our listeners. So we appreciate you. Thank you for spreading the gospel. This was great. Thanks for the time this morning. You're welcome. Thank you. Let's go back to the show. That was awesome talking to Morgan. I really appreciate her point of view and I love that she really like drilled down on that measurement issue that we're facing inside of gaming and it just reminded me about how this still is a very new space and it continually, it always feels like it's the early days of like social media marketing, but inside of gaming. But I guess I'm just getting tired of that because we've been in the trend so long where it's like we see the value and it's like, why are we not converting more yet? Yeah. Yeah. Now I completely agree with you. It really shows how platforms like Fortnite and Roblox and, you know, beyond are in the same early stage position that Instagram, YouTube and TikTok were when they first started. So it's frustrating for us because we've been in this space for quite some time and we do know the value, but I'm hoping, you know, that all of these initiatives that are happening from standalone spaces to integrations to everything in between will move the industry forward and in the way that we wanted to, you know. And yeah, where we're able to show that value to brands. Yeah, I would say it's not an if, it's a win. So just hold on, keep doing what you're doing and eventually it'll turn into what we see in social media where most brands are like, I have to be there. I figured out how it's beneficial for me and we're consistent. For sure. Completely agree. All right. Well, this week you are going to do the hit, miss and bet. So I'm curious to get your point of view on the space. So this week's hit comes from Disney Plus. I'm going to bring it up again because I absolutely love it. So again, for high school musicals, 20th anniversary, they released the full film on TikTok and 52 short parts. Now, what they did that I love so much is that they adapted a creator-like approach. But by posting it officially, just like we talked about prior to this in this episode, they own the traffic. They are controlling the quality, the messaging, everything around it. And then they're keeping viewers scrolling through the story directly on their own page. So I really want to say that this episodic creator-like content approach is worth scaling beyond social and into more immersive marketing environments too. And going forward, I really think that the strongest IPs, they will extend beyond a single release into multiple touch points. So just like we talked about social gaming, streaming and then merch of course. So creating a compounding effect that drives sustained fandom and then loyalty rather than a short-lived spike. That is the hit of the week for me. Yeah, I love that hit. I think we're going to see like a ton more. I think they've just sort of like, you know, know, kind of set the bar. So get ready to see more highly produced chunked out pieces of content in your feeds. Yeah, I'm ready to work on that. My miss, my miss, also tying back to something that we talked about earlier. So this week's miss is the belief that, you know, AI tools like Gemini 3 and Lingbot will break the gaming industry and replace studios. There's a lot of talk just like you said, Nick, I'm linked in, but everywhere that Gemini 3 and Lingbot will, will yeah, crush the industry. When in reality, it's a creative multiplier. It's not an autonomous game maker. And Lingbot, you know, yes, it goes further into world generation and simulation. I think it can be great for quality, you know, assurance in the future iteration and experimentation, but it's not going to replace studios in the near future at least studios will still own the creative judgment, making bets, building IP, we will manage the teams, navigate trade-offs, and then, you know, shipping on deadlines, AI tools will not be able to do that. So what really changes here is the leverage. I think smaller teams will build bigger games, indie developers will gain studio grade tools and studios that adapt, they'll move faster, but those that don't, they'll fall behind. But the miss in all of this is that, you know, the belief that this will kill the gaming industry. Yeah, I think the industry, what it looks like and what teams look like is going to be shifting around, but I think you're still going to need some really smart, creative, cool people at the helm, deciding what we're doing and why we're doing it. For sure, for sure. And I think it's going to be a good asset for people like us to use when we talk to brands, just visualizing this is what it could look like. We want to amplify. We don't want to replace, right? That's, that's what we're doing, but creatives are still very, very much needed and, you know, everyone else too. So that's this week's miss 100%. What about your bet? My bet is, I feel like I'm tying everything back to what we've talked about in this episode, but so weird. I think that's a good thing. We'll be seeing more brands building around creators. Creators will increasingly serve as the bridge between ecosystems, they will be blending brand content, community and gameplay into experiences that feel native and participatory. Blocks Fest is a clear example of platforms leaning into creative culture as the growth engine, not just a distribution channel. And we see a similar dynamic in what Disney Plus did on TikTok, right? I second that bet. I agree with you. And you know, one of the realizations that we've had recently is that like the game developers, the game creators are the new influencers. That's the value. When you have a game, and it's like a value to the end of power because there's also all this monetization, this sort of, you know, attention sort of monopolizing that's happening on these platforms with these creators, but like brands aligning themselves with them. It's just the same way of like partnering with a massive YouTube star or TikTok star. You can partner with a game creator, get your brand into that game in a unique way. And these are sort of like the leaders and the rock stars of our time, you know? Yeah. Feel like on the gaming side, it's a little new. People, they might think like, oh, that's made by a game studio. That's made by some company or whatever. It's like, it's kind of not. It's made by a couple really smart, younger sort of dev people. And those are the new influencers almost. Yeah, they're trusted community voices. That's what they are. Exactly. Solid bet. But that's a wrap on this week. Everyone, thank you for listening and thank you, IEda, for joining us on Brands and Play as our co-host for February. I'm looking forward to next week. Me too. And you know, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be a part of what's coming over the next few weeks. Who do we have coming all next week, by the way? So for next week, because the Super Bowl is happening this weekend, we're going to be focusing all on how the sports industry is leveraging new immersive UGC gaming platforms to connect with fans and stay relevant. And so we'll be joined with Joe Farron. He's an innovation consultant who has worked with some of the biggest names in sports. I'm really looking forward to that. And listeners, make sure to like and follow so we can keep bringing you the latest on immersive marketing. Edward, please read us out. And that was Brands and Play. Thank you for joining the podcast where we explore immersive marketing and the people who are leading it. Co-hosted by Nikiil and Ada Anderson. Our show today was produced and edited by myself. Get it rig you. Alongside our creative producer, Dr. Giovanni Kassanero. Be sure to join us every week for brand new episodes.