It’s no secret that the consumer journey has increasingly become fragmented. However, there is one channel that has been able to capture the lion share of those consumers — video games. Gaming has become the largest entertainment channel, with over 3 billion people playing games worldwide. However, this ever-growing market is falling short on budget lines, making up less than 5% of advertising spend.
In this episode of IAB There: Viewing Success with In-Game Advertising Through the Programmatic Lens, Andrew Cassin, Senior Director of Agency & Enterprise Partnerships at Equativ, is joined by Aditi Ramesh, Director of Programmatic US at Anzu.io, to discuss IAB’s recent research release, “Finding Success with In-game Advertising: Perceptions of Buyers and Sellers” and provide insight on how these misperceptions are being addressed from a programmatic point of view.
Derek J. Smith comes to IAB with over twenty years of experience in the educational and nonprofit industries. As an Experiential Educator, Derek has utilized the classroom and nonprofit spaces to encourage innovation through the creation of technology-forward programs, leadership development workshops, writing and teaching curricula, organizational operations, and serving others! Most recently, Derek was an Adjunct Professor at the University of New Haven, where he taught Esports Basics, an introductory course to the world of esports. Previous positions also include an Educator for Teach For America; a Guidance Counselor for Texas public schools, and Executive Director for A House on Beekman.
Derek has a Bachelor’s in Communication, a Master’s in Educational Counseling, and will attain a Master’s in Esports Business and Management from the University of New Haven next summer. Derek enjoys spending time with his three children, designing bowties, and simracing (virtual car racing) on the weekends.
Andrew currently leads strategic agency partnerships for the US at Equativ working with Tier 1 Holding Companies and Independent Agencies to utilize Equativ’s global marketplace solutions. In addition, he leads Gaming vertical innovation for the company. Andrew’s professional career started at Forbes.com where he was involved in building out the programmatic sales strategy for the digital publisher during the early days of RTB. Then, he migrated over to the advertising technology sphere where he helped build demand sales strategies and infrastructure at Rubicon Project (now Magnite) and Connatix.
Aditi Ramesh is the Director of Programmatic at Anzu.io, where she leads DSP partnerships in North American markets, making in-game advertising possible programmatically for brands, agencies, and advertisers. She is deeply versed in the planning, buying, and evaluation of programmatic adtech platforms, suppliers, and strategies, including interaction with leading DSPs, SSPs, Audience Data and Publisher partners.
Her previous experience in AdTech includes work at Iponweb, TripleLift, AdRoll & TransferWise.
