Advertising Body's Gaming Measurement Standard Aids Brands in Tracking Return on Investment (ROI) within Roblox, Fortnite, and Mobile Game Platforms

Advertising Body's Gaming Measurement Standard Aids Brands in Tracking Return on Investment (ROI) within Roblox, Fortnite, and Mobile Game Platforms

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has recently introduced a groundbreaking industry standard, the Gaming Measurement Framework, designed to provide advertisers with clarity, consistency, and confidence when measuring the performance of advertising within gaming environments. This framework addresses a long-standing challenge in the digital advertising landscape: the difficulty of comparing and measuring in-game ad campaigns across various gaming platforms and formats.

### What the Framework Is:

The IAB's Gaming Measurement Framework offers a standardized set of metrics tailored specifically to the main types of ads used in gaming, including display, video, audio, and custom ads. For each ad format, the framework defines two tiers of metrics: baseline (required) metrics and optional (value-added) metrics.

### How It Standardizes Metrics across Ad Formats:

| Ad Format | Standardized Metrics Focus | Campaign and Business Impact | |-----------|----------------------------|------------------------------| | Display Ads | Visibility, placement during loading screens, brand recall | Optimizes for screen real estate impact and immediate viewer attention | | Video Ads | Completion rates, engagement levels, true attention metrics | Ensures measurement of immersive ad consumption, such as interstitial videos | | Audio Ads | Completion, brand lift, integration within game soundscapes | Captures listener engagement and effectiveness of sound-based storytelling | | Custom Ads | Event tracking, interaction rates, sentiment analysis | Measures player interaction with branded skins, challenges, or experiences |

By clearly linking these diverse formats to measurable key performance indicators (KPIs), the framework helps advertisers align media objectives with business outcomes, such as website visits, app installs, or brand perception shifts.

### Why It Matters:

With over 80% of U.S. internet users identifying as gamers, gaming has become a mainstream entertainment channel, not a niche market. However, despite gaming surpassing other entertainment sectors in revenue and audience size, advertisers have struggled due to inconsistent metrics and lack of standardized reporting. The Gaming Measurement Framework creates a common language for measurement, making it easier for brands to compare results across different publishers, devices, and ad technologies.

The framework fosters transparency and trust, which is crucial for marketing and finance teams to justify increased investments in gaming ads. It also assists in partner and vendor selection, enabling better campaign planning and strategic budget allocation within gaming.

### Practical Outcomes:

Creative agencies and media planners gain confidence in integrating gaming ads with other digital channels, with consistent, comparable performance data. Advertisers can measure the ROI of gaming campaigns with increased rigor and clarity. Ad tech providers receive guidance on standard reporting requirements, pushing the ecosystem toward better accountability and innovation.

In summary, the IAB's Gaming Measurement Framework standardizes how metrics are defined and reported for display, video, audio, and custom gaming ads, empowering marketers to make smarter, data-driven decisions and confidently allocate budgets in a fast-growing advertising channel. The IAB is hosting a webinar in July, "Play to Win: Measuring Campaign Success in Gaming," to educate marketers on applying the framework to real-world scenarios.

The IAB's Gaming Measurement Framework leverages technology and data-and-cloud-computing to provide a standardized set of metrics tailored specifically to various types of ads used in gaming. This technology-driven framework aims to foster transparency and trust, enabling better partner and vendor selection, strategic budget allocation, and smarter, data-driven decisions in the fast-growing gaming advertising industry.

Read also: