Native in-game advertising platform Bidstack Group has struck a partnership with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, opening up a new platform to advertisers looking to reach the growing and lucrative gaming audience.
The platform lets video game developers monetise their titles by creating advertising space within their currently live and soon-to-be-launched games, via a new Bidstack plugin.
The Unreal Engine is a complete suite of video game creation tools developed by Epic Games, the video game and software development company.
Developers creating games using the Unreal Engine often use third-party plugins to add effects to their games. The soon-to-launch Bidstack plugin, will give such developers full control to identify and define areas within their games through which they could make native in-game advertising available.
This could be any appropriate surface from virtual outdoor billboards and sporting pitch-side hoardings to decal stickers on the sides of vehicles or prints on a character’s clothing. Developers will also be able to retro-fit advertising opportunities into existing games, creating a new revenue stream for their back catalogue.
The Bidstack plugin will mean that in future, when a game using the Unreal Engine (which has passed Bidstack’s stringent brand safety checks) is published, all new advertising inventory contained within that title will automatically become available via the Bidstack’s platform to advertisers to buy programmatically through Bidstack’s growing network of demand side platforms (“DSPs”), including Xandr Invest (previously known as AppNexus), Avocet and Platform 161.
James Draper, Bidstack’s CEO commented: “Our collaboration with Epic Games and their Unreal Engine team provides Bidstack with a frictionless opportunity to scale. Previously it was necessary for us to form relationships with games developers on a one-by-one basis. We will continue to do this, but growth from this strategy alone takes time.
“Our new arrangement with Epic’s Unreal Engine enables developers of all sizes, by adding Bidstack’s technology to their game, to open their ad inventory to global media buyers and potentially attract advertising revenue from the world’s leading brands.
“This collaboration with Epic also gives advertisers an expanded access point to the gaming community, making it even more attractive to advertisers seeking to reach gamers, at a time when revenues from video games are larger than music and video combined.”
