As the story for realizing the philosophy of breakthrough moments goes, while Ari was storyboarding— figuring out why the successful campaigns were successful—the light bulb came on when realizing what they all had in common: the specific moments they ran.

All the most successful campaigns ran during breakthrough moments, which are natural, critical points in gaming where people are most receptive to brand messages. This includes when a player gets a new high-score, achieves a personal best or gets stuck on a level and is in need of help. Think about it like this:Imagine someone that is playing is on level 3 of a game and almost out of lives. But a brand can save the day by offering to “rescue” the player with a “free life” in exchange for viewing a short video ad. The player, in turn, feels gratitude and positive emotions towards the brand.

I have just summed up our Views product for you.

And so, realizing what the “next level” would be for social and mobile advertising advertising, the journey began in redesigning our products, upgrading to version 2.0, and honing in on these moments for brands. Now we’re here, ready to divulge about breakthrough moments and Rewards, the product that completes our industry first product suite dedicated to BTMs. It is safe to say MediaBrix is different from everything in the marketplace. There’s a level of thoughtfulness and everything we do is not just from a brand’s perspective, but has been thought out from all sides. As Wade Tinney, CEO and founder of Large Animal Games, puts it, “[MediaBrix] shows an in-depth understanding of the player experience that I rarely see from other platforms. They’ve thought the problem from every angle – advertiser, developer, user – and have created products that work for all sides.”

Game on.

Today, we’re proud to unveil The MediaBrix Social and Mobile Gaming Report. Over the past six months MediaBrix has compiled benchmark data, resulting in this report and analysis of the performance of social gaming advertising campaigns – including both those on desktop and mobile – as compared to standard online and video advertising benchmarks.

The report includes comparison of social and mobile gaming advertising average click-through rates (CTRs), engagement rates and video ad completion rates to online advertising benchmarks. It also contains social and mobile gaming advertising benefits and best practices for brand marketers.

Key findings on CTR from the report include:

• Social and mobile gaming video ads see an average CTR of 3%, 30x higher than the CTR of standard banner advertising campaigns
• Social and mobile gaming value exchange ads—where the users receive a reward for viewing the full ad—see an average CTR of 11%, over 100x higher than the CTR of standard banner advertising campaigns

The key finding on ad engagement rates is that the average social and mobile gaming engagement rates are around 20%, the highest of the reported ad formats. By way of comparison, Facebook brand pages have an average engagement rate of .50% and pre-roll ads have engagement rates ranging from .7% to 3.64%, according to data supplied by eMarketer.

The key finding on video ad completion rates from the report is that the average social and mobile gaming value exchange video ad completion rate is 91%. In comparison, according to data supplied by eMarketer, the average video ad completion rate for ad networks is 68%.

Get full access to the report here. Read the full press release here.

MediaBrix is proud to announce that it is working with Honda to create an immersive mobile social gaming advertising campaign as a part of the 2013 Honda Civic launch. The campaign will harness the power of interactive social gaming advertising as a way to appeal to the Honda Civic target audience, reaching them on Facebook, mobile and tablet games. Additionally, the campaign program will begin this Sunday, Feb. 10 in order to drive awareness among social gamers who love music and trivia.

Honda is the first automotive company to work with MediaBrix and launch a fully integrated, immersive and interactive advertising experience within SongPop, a popular social and mobile game with over 60 million players developed by FreshPlanet. Honda is also the first automotive company to feature a branded playlist on SongPop, which includes music by the featured artist in the Civic commercials. Through the Music Awards Mix branded playlist, Honda will become an integral part of the gameplay, reaching the large, dedicated SongPop user base.

The power behind this campaign is MediaBrix’s SocialFusion and SocialFlex advertising products. SocialFusion delivers a scalable, exclusive integration to Honda. Through SocialFusion, the Honda brand becomes an integral part of the gameplay through a free branded playlist, inspiring positive brand recognition and association among the dedicated and massive SongPop user base.

The campaign also includes MediaBrix’s SocialFlex product, which offers Honda an immersive brand engagement unit that fits seamlessly into SongPop. SocialFlex, a complement to SocialFusion, offers Honda a way to expand the brand experience through high-impact video advertising featuring the 2013 Honda Civic. SocialFlex was developed specifically with a non-disruptive user experience in mind and is delivered during natural breaks in games.

Read more about this exciting mobile social gaming advertising campaign.

What should marketers know to get into the game (pun intended)? Read Ari’s byline on social gaming trends to find out!

• Video completion rates  82-86x the industry average
• 500% lift in aided and unaided ad awareness for leading brands compared to online norms
• Engagement rates starting at  22%—as much as 2000% higher than other forms of social advertising

Plus, we recently saw a 9x lift in purchase intent for a retailer during the all important holiday season. Learn more now!

“Facebook reports 250 million play social games on the platform each month. Similarly, according to eMarketer, smartphone owners spend almost 39% of their time gaming and tablet owners spend 67% of their time gaming. Social gaming will deliver a captive audience cross-platform, redefining what it means for marketers to do brand advertising in digital mediums.”

Long live social gaming! Read the full list of predictions here.

GamesBeat broke the news in an exclusive story. While a few game developers may have mastered this within their own games, until now, no company has delivered this to the industry at large. Leveraging HTML5 and CSS3 enhancements, this new functionality allows for full screen experiences with features such as video, social sharing and value exchange across all devices and platforms.

MediaBrix offers the industry an automated and seamless way for all app developers to offer consistent user experience with immersive, interactive advertising across all devices and platforms. Thus, we help developers better monetize across platforms and devices with higher CPMs from top brands!

What’s more, our technology is a huge benefit to marketers and agencies. HTML5 and CSS3 allow for multiple full-screen messages and orientation support within one creative execution with minimal assets, along with support for all mobile browsers including Safari for iPhone and Chrome for Android in ways that proprietary technologies do not. Because only one basic set of creative assets is needed for each platform, these technology enhancements have cut creative approval processes and costs by as much as 50 percent.

Read the full press release here.

Every once in a while a chart comes along that really blows our minds. Today, eMarketer published such a chart. According to eMarketer, games make up 43% of time spent on mobile apps worldwide, proving that people spend more time with games on mobile devices than any other app category. This is something we live and breathe here at MediaBrix: people love social and mobile games. And now we have more data to prove it!

A recent eMarketer article discusses how marketers must align their social advertising tactics with consumer preferences. And the research guru has research to prove exactly why. Referencing MediaBrix’s October Harris Interactive survey, eMarketer reveals that 57% of those who had seen a Sponsored Story thought it appeared as content in a misleading way, while 45% thought the same about Promoted Tweets. This data suggests that the majority of consumers find native ads misleading. Marketers using native ads should reconsider if they are using this format for brand building.

To learn more, read the full article here.