重新思漏斗图
We spoke with leaders across the digital advertising industry while at Cannes this year. Here's how they think about mobile gaming's role in the funnel, and why certain notions around gaming being purely performance and lower-funnel is being challenged.
A consumer’s path to conversion is no longer linear and is made up of moments to engage based on intent, context, and receptivity - and mobile gaming can play at each stage.
“I think of the marketing funnel today more like a pinball machine. This notion of upper funnel, mid funnel, drive to performance — it's just not the way the ecosystem is operating. Consumers are everywhere and media is everywhere and everything.”
Lauren Wetzel - WPP
Global President, Data and Technology Solutions
In this new pinball machine era of how brands can engage with consumers, mobile gaming seems to be able to capture consumers at different stages of intention. The attention quality inside a gaming environment, full screen, active engagement, an audience that's opted in to the experience, creates conditions that are well suited to direct response and brand building.
What makes mobile gaming genuinely distinctive is that the upper funnel argument and the lower funnel argument don't have to be in competition. The channel can support both, and increasingly, the infrastructure exists to prove it.
“Mobile gaming is really unique to the marketing funnel because it's one of those channels that can play across all three core components. Upper funnel: reach and engagement with a large player base. Mid funnel: understanding key interests and behaviors. Lower funnel: with the right data sets, you can drive the outcomes.”
Indy Khabra - Livewire
Co-Founder and Co-CEO
The storytelling opportunity reinforces this. Gaming environments offer something rare in digital advertising: extended, uninterrupted time with a consumer who is actively engaged with a screen. That has implications for brand recall and re-engagement that go well beyond what most performance-first strategies are designed to capture.
“Marketers are looking for places to tell their story and they look for longer format pieces to do that. And then they have to find really advantageous ways to do recall or reinforce that messaging from those stories that they've invested in. And gaming is almost a perfect template to kind of do both where you can have a completely immersive, undivided attention, and be able to deliver that message. And you can also use it throughout someone's gaming experience to often create recall and opportunities to reengage with that same consumer and remind them of that original story that you've invested in telling.”
Will Doherty - The Trade Desk
SVP, Inventory Partnerships
Non-endemic categories are beginning to take notice. Healthcare, a sector with some of the most stringent requirements around brand safety and audience targeting, offers a useful signal for how brands outside gaming's traditional advertiser base are starting to evaluate the channel.
“In healthcare, we're looking at gaming, not just as a channel but, as a full community tactic. It's a leaned-in, engaged experience, not passive scrolling. You're immersed in the game that you're playing, or the ad you're engaging with, and you're moved through the funnel seamlessly.”
Kristy Quagliariello - Klick Health
VP, Programmatic Media
For performance-focused buyers, the evolution of mobile gaming's role in the funnel is less about abandoning what the channel already does well and more about expanding how it's planned for.
“Mobile gaming in general gets stuck in a performance bucket a lot of times. And certainly it's great for performance, but you have such an incredible space with that consumer. They're high impact, they're highly viewable. You have my attention for the entire time they're watching the ad. I actually think mobile gaming is a perfect place for branding or an awareness play, something that's more up funnel than the performance play that’s typically attributed to mobile.”
Ashley Wheeler - Magnite
SVP, DV+ Platform
“Mobile gaming has historically been seen as a low funnel, pre-lead capture, very quick response channel. But the amount of attention you can capture means it's something you can move up funnel, into engagement, into awareness plays.”
Crissi Cupak - PMG
Head of Product
What this means for programmatic teams: don't let legacy classification determine your strategy. Mobile gaming is a full-funnel channel, and the teams planning it that way are getting more out of it.
As mobile gaming continues to move further up the funnel, the conversation extends beyond planning to trust. Greater transparency into the advertising experience—through initiatives like Unity Core Standards—helps give marketers more confidence in where and how their brands appear, supporting the channel's continued evolution.
*We invited guests into our content studio to share their perspectives on the mobile gaming industry. The views expressed are their own.