Gameloft: Using Video Game AI Avatars for Advertising

Breathing Life into Characters to Supercharge User Acquisition

Name: Gameloft

Industry: Gaming

Company Size: Over 1,600 employees

Company Mission & Vision: We always prepare for tomorrow today. To allow our fans to play games anywhere, anytime, and on any digital platform, we surround ourselves with exceptionally talented people from across the globe and have built the world’s largest distribution network. This is also how we understand the many cultures that make up our millions of customers worldwide and open our minds to new ideas for each market.

The Evolution of an Innovative Learning Experience

Gameloft, a global leader in the mobile gaming industry, has emerged as a powerhouse with a remarkable presence across the digital entertainment landscape. Founded in 1999, Gameloft has since solidified its position as a premier developer and publisher of mobile and digital games, boasting a sprawling network of studios and offices worldwide including development centers in Montreal, Toronto, Barcelona, Sofia, Bucharest, and Kharkiv – Ukraine, and corporate headquarters in Paris, France. This global footprint underscores the company’s dedication to delivering top-quality gaming experiences to a diverse and expansive audience.

Gameloft boasts an impressive portfolio of popular games that have captured the hearts of millions of players. Some of their most iconic titles include “Asphalt 9: Legends,” the latest racing game in the Asphalt series, and “Dungeon Hunter 5,” an action-packed RPG adventure. With over 1.5 million games downloaded a day, and 190 games in their portfolio, including an array of beloved Disney titles, Gameloft ranks among the industry’s elite studios.

The User Acquisition Challenge

Gameloft first approached D-ID with a common challenge – how do we attract more users? The Creative Agency Team (CAT) in Sofia was tasked with developing the marketing strategy for user acquisition (UA) campaigns and they wanted the games to speak for themselves – literally. With the R&D program in CAT Sofia, the team was looking for an easy and creative solution for short-form video ads that would captivate their target audience. In these in-game advertisements, well-known video game characters would promote the game and encourage viewers to download it.

An Efficient and Cost-Friendly Solution

The CAT Team knew that animating characters for these videos would be expensive and time-consuming, especially if they planned on using a variety of scripts for different characters. After researching several solutions, they found the D-ID Studio. While D-ID offers both a studio and an API, Gameloft found the studio best suited to their needs, particularly for its facial animation and text-to-speech capabilities. They seamlessly integrated D-ID technology into their existing workflow by uploading static images to the Studio, generating speaking portrait videos, and then creating the final promo using traditional video editing software.

Volume and Results

Gameloft’s UA campaigns are primarily hosted on platforms like Facebook, Google Ads, and occasionally YouTube. Incorporating D-ID elements into their videos has consistently yielded exceptional results. With more than 20 creative concepts and sometimes over 50 iterations, Gameloft can now create UA and marketing videos in far larger volumes than before. These videos not only attract new users but also effectively communicate game updates and will soon be integrated into the games themselves. Gameloft’s dedication to excellence is evident in its iterative approach. They continuously refine their videos by altering one element at a time to identify which changes resonate most with users. This meticulous process involves testing various elements, such as call-to-action (CTA) button colors, to optimize user engagement. With each iteration, the CAT team learns more about their users and how to best communicate with them.

Team and Customer Satisfaction

The CAT team finds D-ID’s platform intuitive and user-friendly. They credit the cost reduction as a big reason for using the platform, but they also appreciate that the studio makes video editing easy, thereby reducing the time-to-market. The team used to spend hours writing scripts and looking for the right voice actors, which was costly and labor-intensive. With the pre-loaded voices in the Studio, they simply upload a ready-made script and press generate – a process that takes 3-4 minutes in total.

The response from customers is impressive as well. The new D-ID-generated videos are performing exceptionally well, and the team hopes to expand into other games and characters.

In the dynamic mobile gaming world, where user engagement and acquisition are paramount, Gameloft has harnessed the power of D-ID technology to set new industry standards. Their strategic implementation of D-ID has streamlined the creation of captivating marketing campaigns, one video at a time. Their objective is to expand their reach with AI and to monitor industry trends to consistently improve their UA efforts closely.