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Gamification is more than just a passing buzzword – it’s the future of many things, including advertising.
To learn more about this, I spoke with Matthew Pierce, Founder and CEO of Versus Systems, a company disrupting the conventional advertising world through gamification. Versus gamifies advertising so that users are engaging with ads rather than just watching them. It’s a more immersive experience for advertising and is especially popular with Gen Z and young Millennial consumers.
Gamification makes ads more compelling.
As ads become more interactive and more personal, they become more engaging. Rather than simply being shown an ad, consumers are interacting with it. They’re given an opportunity to win a prize, sweepstakes entry, or points, just by playing a game. Consumers spend more time seeing the brand and product being advertised this way without even realizing it, and the payoff dividends can be huge.
For example, a White Castle campaign where consumers earned a coupon for a free product after playing a game saw a 36% conversion to purchase from that campaign. As Pierce explains it, “It’s not being forced to watch an ad, but being able to choose what you want to play for. That literally opens up different pathways in your brain, and you stop thinking about it as an ad. You see it as a reward, as a prize. You see that it’s something you earned, and that’s materially different.”
Pierce also believes there’s something in all of us that loves to win, which is why gamification is so successful in general. People are inherently more engaged when they’re presented with a challenge, even when the reward is small. While not the norm, one player spent 26 hours just to win a hat. Many players come back multiple times per week to play, and every time they do, they’re being exposed to the product. They’re also more likely to use a reward they earned, rather than were given.
Gamification opens up opportunities for collaboration.
There’s a huge opportunity to up the stakes with group challenges in addition to individual ones, making things collaborative. Imagine if you could play as a community or on teams to win even bigger rewards – it ups the potential level of enjoyment for the consumer, and gets even more eyes on the brand. There could even be a charity component added, which would drive engagement even further. Bringing people together is good for business.
Offers should be personalized, but not at the sake of privacy.
Privacy is at the top of everyone’s mind right now, especially with the addition of the do not track feature rolled out in Apple’s latest iOS release. Companies need to ensure that nothing other than absolutely necessary information is shared, and it’s not being sold. The issue of privacy is only going to continue to become more important to consumers. Companies need to find ways to make apps that get the data they need to deliver personalized, relevant content to consumers without being too invasive.
When you’re creating your next ad campaign, keep gamification in mind. Adding an element of interaction is a natural way to make anything more engaging, more personal, and ultimately more effective.
