In-game advertising: The next frontier for King Price

King Price is proving itself as a game changer. Not only is it the first insurance company in the country to offer premiums that decrease monthly, it's now also the first to do in-game advertising.

Johan Barnard, General Manager: eBusiness at King Price Insurance assures us their marketing plan is anything but a game, with its latest TV and outdoor ads grabbing consumers' attention and making us laugh and comment for all the right reasons.

Here, Barnard tells us more about their latest platform move, set to do more of the same with in-game advertising, with the intended outcome of engaging with a new audience...

1. What motivated King Price to advertise in games?

Barnard: The gaming industry is massive - there's an analysis from PwC that estimates that by 2017 gaming in South Africa will be worth R3.3 billion, with mobile gaming in particular accounting for 39% of South Africa's gaming revenue.

The average gamer is about 32-years-old, has a regular job and a family, and falls into the 6-10 LSM, which is our ideal target market. Gamers are a unique breed, preferring online communication and to opt into brand interactions on their own terms, which means many of them simply wouldn't be exposed to our traditional channels. So these non-invasive adverts gave us a chance to reach them in a setting that's relevant to them.

2. Good thinking. How is King Price going to measure the success rate of advertising in games?

Barnard: The platform is 100% online and impressions can be tracked precisely, so we can analyse the reach and frequency that we get to interact with gamers. Each of the banner ads also features a unique short code, so that we can track how many direct responses we get from gamers who have seen the ads.

3. How did you decide which games to advertise in?

Barnard: As any gamer can tell you, the range of games and genres is extremely broad, so we selected games by looking at the number of impressions available across the board, and tried to make sure we got a good mix of popular genres, like sports games, first person RPGs and auto games.

4. Which form of non-traditional advertising has yielded the best results for you over the years?

Barnard: Online there are many new advert formats being launched, and Google is a big player in the online and mobile advertising market. There is a big focus on contextual marketing, where we use relevant content and time-sensitive placements to speak to customers in the right place, at the right time, and while search marketing is still big, Gmail sponsored promotions have proven extremely effective recently.

Social media has yielded a lot fewer direct leads when you make the comparison between these channels and PPC or search traffic, but for us these channels are also more about CSM, and having an ongoing conversation with our clients.

5. Great. What other advertising trends can we expect over the next couple of years?

Barnard: Mobile is exploding at the moment, and with smartphone and connectivity penetration growing exponentially in Africa, I think a lot more brands are going to start focusing on a 'mobile-first' approach.

Although there are millions and millions of impressions available on these display networks, it's an affordable channel to reach your chosen market. If you get the ad placement and conversion platforms right, there is massive potential.

King Price certainly seems to be following its own advice. For more of their cutting-edge marketing ideas, follow their Twitter feed.