Greedy Games, a two-year-old startup that enables advertising through embedding of brands, is taking on new partnerships globally and preparing to launch video-based ad integration.

The ad-tech startup is partnering with award-winning Czech Republic developer Mad Finger Games and Malaysian digital entertainment studio Mediasoft Entertainment, after having tied up with Indian companies Nazara Games, Reliance Games and Games2win.

Former IIT-Ropar students Arpit Jain and Arink Verma set up Greedy Games after friends complained about ad pop-ups during mobile games. Their platform offers an alternative that embeds brands intuitively within a game without irritating players.

According to Jain, the platform is more content-driven than mediumdriven, as is the case with bigger ad-tech players such as InMobi. “The idea of banners and pop-ups has always been a hindrance for the end-user. We are looking to change the in-game assets to branded assets over time,” said Jain.

With 30 publisher-partners and branded content inserted in over 50 games, the startup is now focusing on the South-east Asian and Middle East markets as well as select partnerships such as Mad Finger Games in Europe. To this end, it has recruited Samuel John from InMobi as head of operations.

“I have a lot of exposure towards the markets these guys plan to expand to. Iwill focus on providing inputs and oversight on market expansion, besides building a strong operational team…They are moving at a remarkable pace,” said John, who was director of operations at InMobi.

According to Manish Agarwal, CEO at Nazara Games, after integrating their software code into some of its games, he found that brand integration wasn’t intrusive for player, making the product a win-win for gaming publishers. “In the gaming world, we are at a nascent stage for embedding advertisements within games that are intelligently put and not intrusive,” added Agarwal. The platform bills advertisers $4-5 for every 1,000 sessions, while the rate overseas is $14-15. According to Jain, Greedy Games earns up to Rs 20 lakh a month.

Fo the company’s next product, Greedy Games plans to embed brands in videos with a specialised algorithm that will be able to retrieve pixel-by-pixel analysis of visibility and what kind of user engagement is taking place with the brand. The platform will focus on matching the video creator with an apt brand.

“Video as content is difficult to monetise upon. Small publishers depend on YouTube and Facebook ads. We are trying to monetise the videos by placing brands within it without affecting the user experience,” said Jain.

Source: The Economic Times