Well, now this is pretty cool. Google has announced a slew of new tools for game developers at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Fransisco, and one of the tools allows developers to create advertisements that can actually be played! Yup, you read that right.
Called Playables, it is more of a new ad-format than anything else. Playables allows developers to create interactive advertisements for their android games. As the name implies, developers can create lightweight versions of the games they are advertising. Then, users would be able to actually play the game — or some of it anyways — when the advertisement pops up in front of them.
The format will be rolled out over the next few months and, you can set these ads in motion on properties across Google Display Network, AdMob, YouTube, Google Search, and Google Play. To put things in perspective, the Google Display Network alone has over 1 million apps, each with its users that range from a few hundred to millions.
By allowing users to actually play the game, Google is allowing them to have a demo of sorts before they go and download it. While advantageous for users with regards to downloading their next game, it is also going to benefit developers. After all, who can rests sampling a brand new game for a few minutes as long as they don’t need to download it.
Google has also introduced an auto-flip feature that will allow developers to create ads that automatically orient themselves to the way the users are holding their devices. So, if the devices are vertical, the ads will play vertically and so on. Google will also automatically create a vertical video ad for developers, when they upload a horizontal one video to AdWords.
Finally, the company is bringing Firebase Analytics on-board through SDKs for Unity and C++. The advantage of analyzing users playing experience is that it allows developers to better understand user engagement and make changes that allows monetization and well as longer life cycles.
