Quests & dragons: The new in-game advertising gold mine — Omnicoach

14 October 2021

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ESJ9 Omnicoach Interview
This piece first appeared in Edition 9 of The Esports Journal

RELATED: Omnicoach origins with CTO Levente Nádai

Two-thirds of all start-ups fail to deliver a positive return to investors, according to the Harvard Business Review. The esports industry is currently experiencing a gold rush of investors — so new organisations, teams, and school programmes must break that statistic to survive.

Small esports teams and esports businesses face tremendous pressure to deliver a return on investment quickly and there is only so much prize money to go around. Per industry standards, only about ten percent of winnings are taken by orgs, the rest goes to the players. That’s why some teams have turned to new methods of fundraising that include the innovation of sponsor offerings and apply advertisements that actually entertain. Here, Omnicoach tech plays a big role.

Looking out for the little guys

Omnicoach has created a white label gamification and monetisation system that uses games, at the moment VALORANT and League of Legends, to engage and challenge target audiences. The tool allows anyone from marketing firms to esports teams to offer rewards such as giveaways and discounts through custom in-game challenges. The complete system — a custom domain with branded outlook, custom quests, and more — can be set up and launched within a day.

“We started as a B2C coaching platform and we realised that whenever a new training exercise, educational content, or coaching video was created in our system, we decreased the customer acquisition costs and boosted the usage of our service,” Omnicoach CEO Dániel Ágoston told The Esports Journal.

“We learnt that we are good at building great tech and creating high-quality content that resonates to a specific fan base or group is very difficult to do consistently,” he added. “That was one reason why we decided to partner up with teams or other content creators. Right now, we are receiving interest from many smaller esports teams. They aren’t the biggest in the world, but they still feel the pressure to deliver ROI to investors and brand partners and the Omnicoach solution allows them to harness the special connections that exist between the team and fans.”

Teams or organisations that use the Omnicoach platform set up a custom challenge that fans can meet to win prizes, such as coupons or products from a brand sponsor. Gamers who participate in custom challenges can enter to win by uploading their video clips into the AI video analysis tool. The image recognition system automatically verifies that the challenge was completed, and presents the reward.

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RELATED: The importance of flexible tools in esports marketing

One case study, involving Japanese esports org DeToNator, found that 80 percent of campaign participants preferred having to ‘win’ coupons as opposed to clicking on a banner ad. DeToNator lowered its cost per acquisition (CPA) compared to previous, more traditional campaigns for the team store.

“Advertisers have a very difficult job in this industry because they need to reach a community that hates advertisements,” said Ágoston. “I see advertising move away from just banner ads and toward engagement for a more lasting impact. The key to this is authenticity and to create real value to the gamers. This is what we would like to help with. We created this plug-and-play service that anyone can set up within a day and can start to offer a new experience and authentically connected sponsors with fans.”

To read the rest of this piece, go to The Esports Journal Edition 9, page 36

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Supported by: Omnicoach