While this column rarely focuses on specific tech solutions,  today’s is an exception, because of a development that promises to help open up a new frontier for connected TV (CTV): marketing in the gaming arena.

Performance CTV advertising platform tvScientific has launched a solution that extends its buying, measurement and attribution capabilities to game publishers and developers, providing direct access to CTV inventory.

The objective: Combining television reach with digital marketing’s trackability and cost effectiveness.

According to the company, the solution reaches 95% of advertising-based video on demand (AVOD) streaming apps with direct deals.

Game developers can use it to match CTV ad exposure to site visits and outcomes through a direct one-to-one deterministic ID match, without relying on extrapolations from small panels or samples.

That data is used to create targeted app install ads that can then be optimized through tvScientific’s technology. Full data access, including to log-level events, is provided to allow for connecting ad exposure with game activations.

The company worked with 15 game developers, including AppLovin, Big Fish Games, Rec Room and Wildlife Studios, to develop and beta test the solution.

Game installs increased by 80% month-over-month during three months of tests, resulting in more than a million installs at an average cost per install (CPI) of $1.90 and an average day seven return on ad spend (ROAS) of 1.25 times — on par or better than the participants’ social media and search campaigns, tvScientific reports. 

“We have always wanted to advertise to television audiences because it gives us tremendous reach and allows us to drive brand affinity for our games, but until now we’ve had a difficult time quantifying the effectiveness of the channel,” said AppLovin VP of Growth Jerome Turnbull. The tvScientific solution offers “the ability to run our video ads across some of the best CTV inventory, while measuring performance and optimizing our campaigns in the same way we optimize in-app, social, or search campaigns.” 

The solution is also offered as a self-serve in-house platform.

It will be interesting to watch how quickly the gaming industry’s CTV ad spend grows (and how soon other CTV platforms look to try to grab some of this business).

Game publishers helped develop a solution that combines television-scale reach via CTV inventory, with digital’s trackability.