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So What's a Branded Map on Fortnite Again?
00:37:17
Next in Media spoke with Matt Edelman, Chief Commercial Officer, Super League Gaming, about whether Fortnite still has a grip on gamers - and how brands can get involved. Edelman also talked about Roblox's growing ad ambitions, the overall gaming ad market, and why he thinks we need to ditch the word "gamer".
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- [00:00]
Mike Shields
This week on nexty Media. The playfronts are next week as leaders in the gaming meets advertising market gather in New York to tout their wares and help sell the in game advertising business overall. So I grabbed some time with Matt Edelman, Chief commercial officer at Super League Gaming to break down the state of the market. Matt is used to helping brands kind of understand some of these less than familiar gaming media options. Like what's a branded map in Fortnite, how do players find them? Do I need an immersive store in Roblox? So I thought it was a good time to catch up with the company and take the temperature of the would be romance between ads and games and why he's so done with the term gamer. Let's get started. Hi everybody. Welcome to Next in Media. I'm Mike Shields. My guest this week is Matt Edelman. He is the president and chief Commercial officer at Super League Gaming. Hey Matt, thanks for being here.
- [00:57]
Matt Edelman
Hey Michael, Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [00:59]
Mike Shields
Yeah, this is, I'm glad to talk to you because it's always interesting to revisit this space that we don't cover enough, I think in this industry and we're right around the playfront. This is perfect timing, but you have a kind of interesting background. Maybe not typical, if there is a typical one for this gaming advertising intersection, but give us a little about how you got here.
- [01:17]
Matt Edelman
Yeah, sure. I don't know that I have ever done exactly what would be considered typical. You know, know I grew up in the Northeast. I'm a New Yorker. I went to school in the Northeast and like most of my friends in school at the time, I interviewed at consulting firms and investment banks when I was a senior in college because those were the only groups that were recruiting on campus and it was a little harder to go out and find opportunities otherwise. So I ended up as an investment banking analyst for a couple of years. Quickly figured out that it was not my thing. Really liked what I was learning, but.
- [01:54]
Mike Shields
Crazy hours, tough life is what I picture.
- [01:57]
Matt Edelman
Yeah, I mean that, you know, I've always been sort of a hard worker in the, you know, kind of classic Gen X form, but I just didn't like what I was doing. I didn't like analyzing spreadsheets and so found an opportunity to move to Los Angeles and help really build Marvel's entertainment business from the ground up. There was a new person who'd taken over Marvel Studios and also became the chief creative officer of the parent company.
- [02:22]
Mike Shields
This is when Marvel's having its own Content and was still pretty much in its infancy.
- [02:28]
Matt Edelman
That's right. The film and television business was in its infancy. I had one of the coolest jobs on the planet. I was running around Hollywood as somebody who didn't know anyone, and I had Spider man and the Hulk and X Men in my back pocket. So I would get calls, you know, back when I was reaching out to people, and they were just asking to talk to Matt Marvel. It didn't really matter who I was.
- [02:54]
Mike Shields
So I cool hero, Matt Marvel.
- [02:57]
Matt Edelman
I was my own version of a superhero. It was an extraordinary time. I mean, just two sort of amusing things that when I first got there, I knew so little about the job that I was going into that I was asked if I wanted the trades. This was when magazines were still printed and widely distributed. And I didn't realize that they meant the Hollywood Reporter and the Daily Variety as the, you know, bibles of the.
- [03:22]
Mike Shields
Entertainment in Eastern Hollywood. Right.
- [03:24]
Matt Edelman
I thought they meant they were going to give me a Bloomberg stock quote machine so that I could follow the trades. And so. And the other kind of amusing part was while I was a comic book reader growing up, and this is a little bit, you know, sort of of a theme that played through my career, I wasn't one of those kids who was, you know, waiting at the door for the comic book store to open so that I could get the latest issue. I read them casually and I went to camp and traded comics with friends. But I spent the first six months at Marvel reading 35 years of comic book history because that's what the job required. I needed to learn the mythology of the characters and the stories and, you know, what was authentic and, you know, what would work in storytelling and other media. And I say it's a theme because really, most of the roles that I've taken on have required a steep learning curve. And it's something that I've always really enjoyed.
- [04:16]
Mike Shields
And that's not a straight line from that to gaming, necessarily, that you can see.
- [04:20]
Matt Edelman
That's right. You know, and. And I had some other activities, you know, in between. Although I was the first person, along with. With a partner while I was at Marvel to ever produce an interactive comic book. We had a toy company at the time that had shelf space at all of the major toy retailers. And it was when technology was starting to enable interactivity on CD ROMs as opposed to. As opposed to a CD that you could only put in and be passively engaged with by watching or listening to something. And so we actually built multiple interactive comic books on CD rom, put them in a package that worked on retail shelves and got them distributed specifically at Toys R Us. And so I still have some of those very old packages. It was pretty cool to see that that product come to life. So, look, not going step by step, but you know, after leaving Marvel, which really was a result of the fact that I couldn't quite tell whether or not the work that I was doing to try to help improve scripts or help improve edited cuts, you know, from, you know, animated series or films, I couldn't tell if it was helping, you know, you know, when you're in a job and you're doing it, you want to feel like you're developing an expertise that's having a real impact. And I just didn't see that output or that outcome from my work. I think if I had remained at Marvel and it was right before, which of course I didn't know at the time, Marvel started financing its own films, which ultimately led to the Disney acquisition, I probably would have migrated more towards the business side as opposed to the full on creative side. And that's really how my career has developed. But it's always been at the intersection of content and emerging tech, including like that CD ROM example and media, with the notion being that connecting to consumers in ways that rely upon creativity, storytelling and often talent is very exciting to me and something that I think I've become, you know, quite skilled at understanding how to do. But I'm not the guy to help make sure that the content or the creative or the talent is exactly what it needs to be.
- [06:41]
Mike Shields
The same elements are there in this gaming universe. If you're not necessarily, you know, making the games themselves, there's a lot of opportunity to do what you're describing in that business. As I mentioned, we're heading into the playfronts. The IAB has been doing this for a few years, kind of bringing the advertising and gaming worlds together. Not easy to do probably. How do you assess the state of like brands, media buyers and gaming coming together and how are things going or not going as fast as they could be?
- [07:09]
Matt Edelman
Well, look, as a seller in the sort of gaming, media and advertising space, nothing will ever be going as fast as I want it to be. And I think all of the companies I sit alongside who are either competitors or frenemies or friends would say the same thing. We'd like it to move more quickly, but it is accelerating and it has been for several years. And it's quite prescient that the IAB set up playfronts a few years back because the interest and the opportunity has really blossomed as more and more time has been spent inside gaming platforms by users. And you just think of the oldest adage in time around marketing is marketers go where users and audiences spend their time and live. There's no denying what that looks like today. 3.3 billion people in the world play games. And just by comparison, that means there are 4.7 people who theoretically do not play games. It's getting close, and it will hit 50% over the next three to five years. You also have the reality that one out of two Americans play video games and two out of three people under the age of 40 play video games. So of course, marketers are moving more dollars there and, and paying more attention, but it's not easy. And I think one of the primary factors for some of the pace that we would like to see increased, not happening yet is generational. So the C suite, CEOs and CMOs are still in kind of the younger, middle to younger Gen X demo. And while a lot of Gen Xers are in gaming, myself included, we did not grow up playing games daily as a rule. We did not have massive multiplayer online games.
- [09:02]
Mike Shields
They weren't communal, they weren't online. It was, it was a much more compartmentalized behavior. Right.
- [09:08]
Matt Edelman
100%. And, and, and if you think about the changes that occurred as millennials became teenagers was when it all really started to take off. It stands to reason that as millennials move into those CMO chairs and eventually.
- [09:22]
Mike Shields
Control budgets and decision making, I think.
- [09:25]
Matt Edelman
There will be a fast migration of dollars at substantial levels into gaming. As a result. People buy what they know. It's natural. Why is there still so much television advertising? And if you look at the ads that are on tv, they appeal to Gen Xers and Baby Boomers because that's what our generations know and that's what the CMOs and the CEOs believe in. And so that generational shift is coming. In the meantime, measurement is improving dramatically. Ad formats are becoming more compelling and precise, and attribution is becoming a reality. And the openness on the part of brands and agencies to look at gaming a bit differently is expanding.
- [10:16]
Mike Shields
I want to come back to some of those mechanics you talked about and just what would make things easier or move faster. We're 10 minutes in. I haven't even asked you, so what are. What is. Tell people what Super League is and where they should put you.
- [10:30]
Matt Edelman
Sure. Thank you very much for offering that. You know, we are in a very exciting place in the ecosystem and our approach to the space is really about helping to make your brand playable. If you are a marketer, we help make your brand playable and frankly, that is what we believe the philosophy needs to be for brands going forward. If you have an audience or a customer base that, as I mentioned earlier, is under 40, 67% of your audience is spending time in games. And if you don't make your brand playable by showing up in these playable environments and tapping into that love of gameplay, you are actually missing out on important ways of engaging your audience and so, so super.
- [11:15]
Mike Shields
So that's different. That's different than just reaching people in video games. Like playable is the key, key factor there. Why is that?
- [11:23]
Matt Edelman
Well, if you think about it. So let's take a half a step back and think about it first from an audience perspective. You know, for the last 50 plus years, ad formats haven't changed. You're still advertising with video, audio, text and images. Maybe you could say experiential marketing has become a new format and that's valid and it has become a very important format. But it's really only important because it generates the equivalent of organic advertising in the form of social media posts that are video and text and images and audio. And so the question is, are those the right formats to really create a relationship with somebody who is spending time in an interactive environment? And our premise is those formats belong there and they are going to behave and perform more successfully than in other places because of again, that time spent and the focus that a person has when they're inside a gaming environment. But they, in our view are really the amplification side of advertising inside gaming environments. And what brands should be thinking about is how do you engage somebody who's playing with an ad or a piece of content that is also playable. That's where you will connect with them and tap into their passion. If I'm sitting around a room at a media agency and I'm thinking about running video ads, I'm not thinking about running video ads against video viewers. That's not the way my brain works. I think about running video ads against males 18 to 34.
- [12:58]
Mike Shields
Sure.
- [12:58]
Matt Edelman
Or fashion enthusiasts. Why are media agencies, and particularly brands still thinking about advertising to gamers? Right.
- [13:09]
Mike Shields
It doesn't. What you said is a humongous demographic and varied. And not all. Not homogenous at all.
- [13:16]
Matt Edelman
Not at all. And it's not even that. It isn't homogeneous, it's the same audience. It's just that that's where they are spending their time. And so Our view is think about the people who are playing games the same way you think about people who are watching videos and look at the audience segments and the targets that you need. And put the right ad formats in our view, leading with interactive ad formats, playable ad formats, and the engagement is going to go through the roof. And we have data around that. We see it very clearly.
- [13:47]
Mike Shields
So getting back, finally getting back to you guys, are you closer to a gaming ad network? Are you more like a developer and studio, a creative team that specializes in gaming or all the above? What are you?
- [14:00]
Matt Edelman
That's a good point. We really function as an agency type of business where we help our clients figure out how to put themselves in front of their target audiences with playable content, playable advertising and playable experiences, often amplified with IAB standard solutions that belong inside games. And we design those strategies and those campaigns, we respond to RFPs that are looking for those programs and then we run them. And part of that uses proprietary technology, particularly in Roblox. Part of that uses our award winning creative development studio in Roblox. And we have a pretty premier set of partners we collaborate with to make sure that we have again those right ad formats, hitting the right users in the right places and that we can really build any immersive environment or in game environment that's required.
- [14:58]
Mike Shields
I'm going to come back to Roblox in a second, but I want to ask you something. It's specific, but people throw these terms around. If you paid attention to this world at all, you know the Fortnite's been huge the last decade, but if you're, if you're a non gamer, you are not a Fortnite person. You probably don't exactly know how brands can do stuff there or not. So tell people, okay, what's a, what is a Fortnite map and what is a branded map and how do people get them and what do they use them for? What does that mean?
- [15:23]
Matt Edelman
So I'm going to answer that question, but I'm going to provide maybe a framework that will be helpful. Fortnite has two modes. One mode is their first party game. It's Battle Royale. It's generally what the broader population thinks about if they are aware of Fortnite. And it is managed entirely and created and run entirely by Epic. They have another portion of the Fortnite ecosystem that is all user generated games and those are called maps or really they're called islands. And that means that anyone who is willing to put in the time to learn how to use the creation tools Epic provides that are sort of an outgrowth of Unreal Engine, which Epic also owns and is the most widely used game creation engine in the world. That community can use an outgrowth of those tools to build their own islands. And so that's called the Fortnite creative ecosystem. And there are tens of thousands of islands that have been built by members of the Fortnite community or other game creators or aspiring game creators. That portion of Fortnite Creative, along with Roblox, are the two most vibrant UGC gaming platforms in the world.
- [16:47]
Mike Shields
And interrupt you for a second is one classic Fortnite, the survival be the last one standing game mode where the other is for hanging out with your friends. Or is that, is that too much of a simplification of the different. Different modes?
- [17:00]
Matt Edelman
It's too much of a simplification. Largely, though the first part of what you said is correct. That is the last one standing wins environment. But a Fortnite map, a Fortnite island can be anything that a creator wants it to be within the capabilities of the creation tools. Most of those islands mimic some of the same gameplay that is in the main battle royale game because the player base really enjoys that type of gameplay. Other types of islands broaden the gameplay experiences into other game formats that you might see as similar to some mobile games or similar to other video games or similar to games that you would find on roblox. To the UGC gaming space is effectively the current generation's YouTube. Right? And that. And that was the framework I was going to mention because you asked about advertising. You asked about how a marketer can get into this space and what that looks like. If you think about YouTube, there are a few ways that you can participate. You can have your own channel if you're a brand. But the reality is that's not likely to be where you get the majority of your engagement because your channel is competing with all of the native channels that are created by YouTubers who understand how to appeal to their audience in a very different way than you do as a brand. The next level down, you will start working with those YouTubers, influencers. And there are really two ways that you'll do that. One way is you might do something very custom with an influencer where they create a piece of content about your brand. Let's say it's Nike. They might come up to the sneaker factory and do a video about how sneakers are made, put it on their channel. Nike doesn't spend any media to drive viewers because that channel drives it all organically at a sufficient level. The next level down might be a shout out from a creator. So in front of the creators regular video they might call out something about Nike. Nike wanted them to promote a new pair of Jordans and they put them on screen and talk about them and then they go to their regular video. And then the final way of reaching an audience on YouTube is by buying ads. And you're buying YouTube specific ads, but you're also buying IAB standard ads. Right, that framework. Yeah, 100% pre rolls, you know, banner ads. That framework is identical to the framework that either exists in the case of Roblox or partially exists in the case of Fortnite. So as a brand you might create your own environment, your own game, your own map, your own experience. Chances are unless you are an IP based brand like Marvel or something.
- [19:50]
Mike Shields
Yeah.
- [19:51]
Matt Edelman
It is going to be challenging for you to get the kind of engagement on the platform that a native creator is generating. It still may be a good idea for you to have that experience. But you are going to have to engage with the creative community on the platform in order to reach a larger audience.
- [20:10]
Mike Shields
Right. If you have Kraft Macaroni and Cheese island, no one's going to go there unless you get some work to get them there or work with somebody to help you.
- [20:17]
Matt Edelman
Yes. And you will also as Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, you will want to find clever ways for your brand, your products to show up in other popular games. And that happens through heavy lift integrations where there might be a whole Kraft Macaroni and Cheese level. That's an obstacle course level built in a popular obby on either Roblox or that is an obstacle course based Fortnite Island. The next level down is you might do something that is more equivalent to the YouTube creator shout out where you will put a kind of mini game into an existing popular game. And it is something you build once but you can distribute to multiple games at the same time. And that's actually where Super League has a pretty unique capability. We have a technology that allows that type of scale very quickly in Roblox and partnerships that allow for that kind of scale very quickly in Fortnite.
- [21:18]
Mike Shields
So I think you mentioned there is the one difference between that and the YouTube analogy that you can't buy standard ads in Fortnite like you can in YouTube.
- [21:27]
Matt Edelman
That's correct. You can buy ads in Roblox. They have continued to advance their ads business and are, you know, heading in the direction of, of having a full programmatic solution. Fortnite is not offering that and is unlikely ever to go there.
- [21:44]
Mike Shields
Yeah, that doesn't seem to be an Epic's DNA, I guess. Are people still give us give me like I hear different things from my kids. Fortnite is not as cool now it's back. Is Fortnite still as big as it was several years ago? The kind of thing that people are going to play their whole lives, there's always going to be a young person thing. I don't know if you can tell that. What's the state of things there?
- [22:06]
Matt Edelman
I think the core Fortnite audience is always going to be generally in that 14 to 24 year old range with 18 to 24 being the sweet spot. But the enthusiasm and player base responds with Fortnite the same way that players respond generally to games that are essentially free to play with a live operations component, meaning they are constantly being updated. All of the Roblox games, all of Fortnite Creative and the main game are constantly being updated with new content, new play modes, new ways to delight the user who shows up. And Fortnite Battle Royale, the main game, it's the largest of the games in this category as a single game. When they do updates, they will see, you know, users spike up to, you know, 30, 40, 45 million daily active users. When they went back to OG Fortnite, they hit a record of I think 44 million daily active users and they were back in November of 2024 at 100 million-plus monthly active users on a regular basis without content updates. They are below those levels, but the data suggests they stay pretty level at around 30 million monthly active users. So it's still a behemoth of a year.
- [23:24]
Mike Shields
That's a pretty great number. Yeah, I loved how it was Fortnite og, which was like. Oh, you mean like seven years ago? Like you're nostalgic for things that just happened. But yeah, everyone responded to that in that community. Roblox, they seem like for a few years there they were sort of keeping advertising at arm's length. They were, you could do like immersive worlds, but not a lot of like, I don't know, blocking and tackling with advertising. That's definitely changing and they seem to be accelerating. But although it's still another core business, kind of give me the state of advertising and Roblox where you think it's going.
- [23:55]
Matt Edelman
So it's a bit behind where advertising opportunities exist inside mobile games, for instance.
- [24:03]
Mike Shields
Sure.
- [24:04]
Matt Edelman
And we should come back to mobile games because that's been area of very exciting expansion for Super League. Our playable Ad format for mobile is really taking off and performing in an exciting way. But with Roblox, they're still behind where mobile games are, but they are working hard to catch up quick. And the way that they are behind still is really around measurement and attribution. Their product improves consistently. And when I say their product, I mean not just the ad format and the way it is received by the community in game and in this case it's primarily a video ad production. But the improvements are also around how targeting works, how measurement works, you know, how the inventory can be bought, et cetera. All of that infrastructure that goes into really creating a full scale programmatic solution continues to advance. At some point, you know, they'll be challenged by the media agencies to provide the level of measurement around attribution and delivery.
- [25:09]
Mike Shields
It's okay for so long to say we're not there yet.
- [25:12]
Matt Edelman
That's right. Right now Roblox still fits largely into the innovation budgets that agencies and brands are deploying because in order to tap into their, you know, substantial media budgets that they are spending on a recurring basis year after year, the results of, of that spend have to match or exceed on a dollar for dollar basis. The results that they're getting from something else. Yeah, really from Meta and Google. I mean that's, that's who Meta, Google, Amazon, Walmart, the places where ad dollars go for various types of campaigns. You know, Roblox's ads have to deliver that same outcome. They have the audience. And so there's no question that as they improve their product and reach that stage of efficacy that it should be, you know, quite successful.
- [26:02]
Mike Shields
Roblox has talked openly in the past about getting older, trying. Maybe you'd even use it at work. I don't know if we're there yet, but do you think Roblox remains a kid thing over time or does it become something that is cross generational and has more uses?
- [26:17]
Matt Edelman
It's a great question. You know, I think they've publicly said that their goal is to have at least 10% of the activity on Roblox be non gameplay oriented by 2030. They also I think aspire to have, and I apologize if I'm not getting the numbers quite right, but the number 10% sticks in my head. For both of these stats. They want to own 10% of the gaming market, meaning 10% of gameplay time is inside Roblox. I don't know if there was a year attached to that goal as opposed to just an aspiration. It's very ambitious. But they have been growing At a remarkable rate. With more than 300 million monthly active users now on the platform. The only way that those numbers end up being achieved is if they do continue to age up. Most of that is going to be dependent upon there being games on the platform or experiences that drive other kinds of interaction that people don't grow out of and that people want to stick with. Acid. A hit.
- [27:17]
Mike Shields
Shopping 1670 something what? Something along those lines that appeal.
- [27:21]
Matt Edelman
Or games. Or games. Right. So Roblox is, is going to be coming out with its own battle Royale, you know, kit that allows people to build battle royale games inside Roblox which has not been possible yet because the server size is and the demand on the infrastructure has been too high. But they are solving for that. That could age up the platform. There was a remarkable game that many people have been aware of named Dress to Impress that was created by a 16 year old girl and became a hit game among college females over the past six plus months. That aged up the platform and also balanced the gender thing.
- [28:03]
Mike Shields
Yeah.
- [28:03]
Matt Edelman
On the platform. And so the content will be responsible for the demo.
- [28:10]
Mike Shields
Couple more questions. Matt, you mentioned mobile. It's. I would almost. I wonder if you put that in. It's almost like its own category because it's. It's actually been very hospitable for digital advertising for a long time. Most mobile games are like, you know, you could serve ads the same way and they have natural breaks. And I curious your entry there because it's probably crowded but there's probably a lot of money and it sounds like you're doing something that's pretty unique. Talk to me about why you're there.
- [28:36]
Matt Edelman
So a few reasons. One, to your point, it's mature. The ad formats are well recognized and the capabilities of what a media agency and its clients can get as an outcome around customer acquisition and measurement and attribution are all baked into the ecosystem. So there's no friction if you have something that's compelling in mobile as an ad solution. And so what we looked at was what's happening inside mobile games that is emerging that we believe can really accelerate and change the way that media agencies approach the mobile gaming app ecosystem. And the clear line for us became about playable ads. And we have a partner who has developed a very compelling playable ad format. It is not a unique format in the sense that there are other playable ads, but it is a unique format in how we create and deliver the ads. And so effectively we can take a video commercial from a brand, let's say Pizza Hut and we can turn that video commercial into about a half a dozen mobile games that only leverage the creative in that video commercial so that when that game is being played, the user who is playing the game is interacting with that brand's messaging and iconography and logo. And we create, let's say, half a dozen versions because we know that Pizza Hut's demographic typically plays mobile game types that are the same as the six that we build. And then we place those ads into the same game type as the ad game type. So if you are playing an Endless Runner, we will serve an ad to you that is an Endless Runner that mimics Pizza Hut's television commercial or video commercial. And we can even play the commercial at the top portion of the screen. And the gameplay is synced with the video and the turnaround time and the reach and the pricing and the results are quite remarkable. We see video completion rates that are 70, 80% higher than video that runs in that same inventory. We see click through rates that we've even had one campaign that was a 5,000% higher click through rate in our ad format than the typical video that had run in those units previously. And so that represented the beginning of our entry into mobile. And what we're very excited about is really two extensions of that one. Mobile games have massive audiences and brands have not really had an opportunity at scale and across a network of compelling games that have gameplay matching their audience target. They've not had the opportunity to integrate their brands into games in a seamless way. We have built up that DNA and that muscle over the last four years by working with literally hundreds of Roblox developers and Fortnite developers. And we are now building a network of incredible mobile game developers who are all very interested in starting to build custom integrations with brands into their mobile games. So I mentioned, we talked about the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese level that is now something that mobile game developers are excited about, which has a lot to do with the fact that growth has sort of stagnated in the gaming business at large. And so that's one extension of what we're doing in mobile. So now we can tell Kraft Macaroni and Cheese that they will have a custom level in one, two or three top mobile games. And in between those levels, we can put a playable ad that is the same game type as the game that that person is playing and create this really holistic experience that drives a ton of value for, for craft.
- [32:46]
Mike Shields
And that's the kind of thing that used to be, I imagine, super custom, slow, bespoke now you can do that at a much more scalable level, it sounds like.
- [32:53]
Matt Edelman
That's right. And, and the other extension that we're very excited about is we are finding a very high degree of enthusiasm around the concept of playables. As I said at the very beginning, that's really our philosophy is that your brand needs to be playable. And we have something we're going to be talking about at Playfronts, in fact, that demonstrates what we believe brands will start to embrace, which is having a home where their customer base can learn how to unlock opportunities to play with that brand. And those opportunities should not be relegated to Roblox or Fortnite or mobile. They should be across all of these platforms. The opportunity should live inside Discord. There are ways to play with TikTok content content if you set it up correctly. And so our vision of a brand being playable is really not about only showing up in gaming platforms. It is embracing the concept of playability and recognizing again that two out of every three people under the age of 40 are playing games. So why not create opportunities for them to play with your brand and interact with your brand in a way that occupies a ton of time for them every single day. So our playables are going to be across platform. We are going to be able to offer them in mobile and in immersive environments and imagine a future where a media agency, all they have to do is check a box on an IO next to the playables line and we will determine where those playables should appear in order to reach the audience target and match the KPIs. Just as a brand doesn't think all that much, in many types of campaigns, whether a video shows up on, you know, this YouTube channel or this other.
- [34:36]
Mike Shields
YouTube channel, it's not a special innovation test budget anymore. It's or strategy.
- [34:40]
Matt Edelman
We can just run it at scale.
- [34:42]
Mike Shields
Closing on this, you mentioned the importance of eliminating friction and making things seamless. Besides, like the generational shift that probably has to happen among decision makers, what's in your way? Like what's, what's the biggest obstacle that in terms of you or the broader industry needs to get past to have to have this grow faster?
- [35:00]
Matt Edelman
Yeah, I would say that there are probably three key ingredients. One is really shifting the perspective that gamers represent your target audience the same way that people who watch videos represent your target audience. And for too long the gaming industry has gone to brands and said you need to reach gamers. So everybody in the ecosystem has to work on that. And we hope, you know, to help lead that, that transformation in thought. The second is the formats. And it's not again that IAB standard formats, living inside games or banners, showing up on, you know, Twitch, you know, when something cool happens on the gameplay aren't valuable. But those are just about creating awareness. And awareness with a leaned in locked in audience is better than awareness with a passive audience who is watching videos and probably talking to their friends at the same time while not looking at the screen as the ad runs or they hit skip. So awareness will be better achieved with comfortable formats. But that represents the second point which is new formats, playable formats, things that.
- [36:14]
Mike Shields
Take advantage of the unique aspects of.
- [36:16]
Matt Edelman
This need to be embraced. Yeah, that's right. And I think, and I think the third thing is really about platforms like Roblox reaching maturity with their product. That will change the perspective of what's possible and bring a level of scale that very few other platforms can bring. Roblox has a lot of market opportunity and as a result, a lot of market power. And so when they get to a mature product, it will probably be the final straw that, you know, moves more money into this, into this ecosystem.
- [36:50]
Mike Shields
You might say it'll be a game changer.
- [36:52]
Matt Edelman
You might, you might say that. I like that. I like that.
- [36:54]
Mike Shields
Matt, awesome conversation. I kept you forever here, but this is great stuff. Thank you so much for your time. Good luck at the playfronts and let's talk again.
- [37:00]
Matt Edelman
Thank you so much, Michael. Great to talk.
- [37:03]
Mike Shields
Thanks again to my guest this week, Super League Gaming's Matt Edelman, and my partners at Elemental tv. If you like this week's episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review. We have lots more to bring you, so please hit that subscribe button. We'll see you next time for more on what's next in media. Thanks for listening.