NativeX plans to make the ads in free-to-play mobile games work better for everyone

Commercial interruptions are rarely fun, but a mobile-game ad-technology company is looking to make the process less annoying for players and more lucrative for developers.

NativeX, a firm that specializes in ad technology for games, revealed its plan today for a global ad exchange designed from the beginning specially for mobile games. The firm’s tools enable developers to create customized digital advertisements. These marketing spots include video, interstitials, and multi-offer ads that work for campaigns based both on rewarding players who go on to install other games as well as standard campaigns that don’t incentivize consumers to click through. While gamers around the world spent $16 billion on mobile games last year, ads are still an important driver of revenue for a number of free-to-play titles. While consumers typically dislike seeing promotions break up their action, NativeX thinks it can minimize that by enabling marketers to create better-looking and less intrusive ads.

“The mobile game market can’t fully prosper until native ad solutions mature into native monetization tools, and it’s become our mission to focus on mobile game monetization to drive the market to realize it’s potential,” NativeX cofounder Ryan Weber said in a statement. “It is no longer just about targeting the right ad to the right user at the right time. Game developers have unique opportunities to make more money from advertising based on their in-game economies. Our NativeX ad exchange extracts maximum value from every single ad impression.”

In today’s mobile ads, crude banners regularly bombard players, and these tend to flash onto the screen suddenly and often at a different orientation than they’re holding their smartphone or tablet. NativeX is addressing these problems by giving developer the capability to add game elements and characters to the marketing spots. Game makers can also define what kind of ads they get in their games (video or something else) based on the placement.

NativeX also confirmed to GamesBeat that ads will always follow the orientation of the game, which means no more twisting and turning to read text or to watch a video. The company is also eliminating low-resolution banners and video. Weber wants to see a natural presentation that makes sense for each individual game.

When switching from the old advertising formats to something native, the company claims that it has seen revenue quadruple within two weeks. To ensure the best performance, however, NativeX gives developers tools to test different ads against one another to see what is the most effective.

NativeX already has 50 partners looking to purchases ads for thousands of campaigns throughout Asia, Europe, and North America.