An advertisement doesn’t have to show gaming-related merchandise to be successful, the research also found. Many of the advertisements featured in the study were not gaming specific. The livestreaming experience provides advertisers with a unique engagement opportunity, according to Villatoro.

“People who are watching the stream are already engaged, they've been chatting, it's not just the viewing experience…” said Villatoro. “So whenever we talk about full screen versus non-full screen, of course, full screen will dominate more attention, because there's nothing else to look at when it's on screen.”

Going beyond traditional pre- and mid-roll advertisements, non-distributive intrinsic advertising performed exceptionally well, according to Dentsu’s research. These ads typically take the form of an in-game billboard or other naturally occurring object. This portion of the study was measured with Activision Blizzard.

Intrinsic advertisements saw an average of 3,442 seconds of attention, which is the composite total time across 1,000 participants during this portion of the study. This number is much higher compared to the 1,416 seconds enjoyed by traditional online ads. Intrinsic ads performed slightly worse than social ads, which commanded an average of 3,975 seconds of attention. Anzu reported 98% visibility on screen for in-game ads, compared to the industry standard of 87%.

Loot box

Rewarded video also proved to be an effective tool, with a 100% on-screen impression rate. Much like intrinsic advertising, rewarded video does not disrupt game play. Rather, the consumer is choosing to view the advertisement in exchange for some sort of reward, such as an extra life. These videos take up the whole screen in order to ensure visibility, and often can use assets from other sites, according to the Dentsu report.

These videos also have a high opt-in rate, with 4 in 5 consumers willingly viewing such content.

For gaming-related advertising to find success, it ultimately comes down to knowing the gaming environment and picking the ideal asset.

“It’s hard to control the gaming environment. Unless you're an advertiser that knows you can control the gaming environment. So for us, it was just completely random, like we put video assets all over the place, we put static assets all over the place,” said Villatoro. “But I think some of the learnings here for advertisers are, you can be very selective about where you want to appear in these gaming environments, and then tailor your creative to be the right fit for that environment.”

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