Mobile-marketing company Leadbolt introduces ‘non-intrusive’ video ads for mobile

You should start seeing even more video ads in your free-to-play games as another marketing firm embraces the format.

The mobile-marketing platform Leadbolt is breaking into video. It’s just one of many companies to do so, but the firm says it is seeing drastically improved results from its implementation compared to other ad formats. Leadbolt chief executive officer Dale Carr told GamesBeat that his team has developed a targeting and display tools that will help marketers reach the audience they want without annoying those people. The mobile ad market, which includes both the web and apps, hit $18 billion in 2014 — and competitors in the market include Optimatic, Rocketfuel, and Moby.

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“Leadbolt’s sophisticated ad serving technology is getting even smarter,” said Carr. “It considers [many factors] and data points to detect and deliver the best-matched ad to a specific audience and app.”

Carr’s team is offering up 15 second or 30 second spots to advertisers. And the company is promising no latency for the videos. The data is pre-cached, which means people don’t have to wait to watch a commercial. That’s one of the ways the company is minimizing the jarring effect of throwing people from a game or another kind of app into a video.

“The video ads are also placed in areas within the game experience that are not intrusive,” said Carr. “For example, [we often put ads] after a level is completed, when the viewer may welcome a brief break.”

Leadbolt’s ads are also skippable and repeatable.

“Quality is a key factor here, as the video quality is not only exceptional but plays without any load time,” he said.

Getting videos right is important for Leadbolt. The company has already found that this ad product works better than static images. The company worked with casual game developer Movile on a test of the videos, and the company found it got 18 times the traffic, 25 times the installs, and 75 percent more engagement when compared to other ad products.

So, it’s better for developers (who make more from ads that perform better), it’s better for marketers (who get a better return on investment), it’s better for Leadbolt (who can charge more), and it’s arguably better for viewers who may occasionally find some entertainment value from the ads.