In-game ad firm Frameplay teams with others — including competitors — to launch its own exchange

“It is, by far, the biggest pool that you can access, in terms of users, impressions and volume,” said Frameplay president Jonathon Troughton, who declined to share specific figures regarding the platform’s scale and reach. “There is a significant distance between us and anybody else.”

Frameplay is currently calling its ad exchange the Frameplay Exchange, although Troughton made it clear that this name is subject to change as the product evolves. The exchange can be used for both the programmatic purchasing of in-game inventory and for direct buys from brands and agencies.

At the moment, three of the five leading intrinsic in-game advertising firms are offering their inventory on Frameplay’s exchange, including the inventory of Frameplay and two other prominent in-game advertising companies, Adverty and AdInMo. Troughton said that other in-game ad firms were welcome to join the party.

“We’ve got an opportunity to capitalize on this incredibly powerful supply that’s available en masse at reasonable economics — that’s the opportunity, and it’s so much bigger by bringing together three of the five players in the space,” said Frameplay CEO Sandy Shanman. “Three of the five of us are coming together and providing a critical mass of supply. From there, [marketers] can end up with a really broad swath of what they want, contextually and geographically.”

The gaming industry is still growing — albeit not as quickly as it did during the Covid-19 lockdown. But despite the rise of the medium, many observers of the space feel that brands’ spending in gaming does not yet match the opportunity to reach consumers through video games.

“The gap between how big gaming is, in terms of user engagement and time and reach, doesn’t correlate with how much advertising is on there,” said Zoë Soon, vp of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Experience Center, who has led recent efforts to educate marketers about gaming such as this month’s Casual Gaming Buyer’s Guide. “We’ve spoken before about why we think that is: the stereotypes, the lack of infrastructure, the lack of widely accepted ad models. We’re chipping away at that.”

For companies such as Adverty and AdInMo, offering inventory via the Frameplay Exchange is a simple and straightforward way to put their ad products in front of more buyers, even if they are ostensibly competitors of Frameplay. AdInMo CEO Kristan Rivers told Digiday that his firm’s primary motivation in joining the effort was “to make our inventory scale, as well as from an educational perspective” to help raise marketers’ general awareness of in-game advertising.

As the in-game advertising industry searches for the right path forward, Frameplay’s new exchange is the latest example of companies working together to create a rising tide for businesses across the space. Adverty CEO Jonas Söderqvist said that participating in the initiative was a no-brainer.

“We could be a force to be reckoned with, and not individually, but collectively so,” he said. “So when [Frameplay] approached me with this, I was eager to jump onto that ship, because I truly believe that this is the way forward.”

At the moment, the majority of the ad inventory offered on the Frameplay Exchange is located inside free-to-play mobile or PC games, rather than the premium console gaming inventory coveted by some advertisers. It remains yet to be seen whether console inventory is necessary to convince brands to truly buy in, but given the bespoke, custom-coded nature of some console gaming ads, exchanges like Frameplay’s might currently be a better fit for the plug-and-play ads that are the norm inside casual or mobile games.

“Different ad activations are for different parts of the funnel and for different reasons. The beauty of mobile and casual gaming is that a lot of your ad assets from other channels can be reused and trafficked in the same way,” Soon said. “I think that’s a big advantage.”