Launching the GameInfluencer Marketing Platform to Connect Game Publishers With The Best Matching Influencers Who Create the Most Effective Let’s Plays

Project Information

GameInfluencer

Grant agreement ID: 790146

DOI

10.3030/790146

Project closed

EC signature date 22 December 2017

Start date 1 January 2018

End date 30 June 2018

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

GAMEINFLUENCER GMBH
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GameInfluencer (Launching the GameInfluencer Marketing Platform to Connect Game Publishers With The Best Matching Influencers Who Create the Most Effective Let’s Plays)

Reporting period: 2018-01-01 to 2018-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

At GameInfluencer GmbH, we are on the way to becoming the leading international one-stop marketplace for booking, monitoring and paying influencer marketing campaigns. Our customers are game publishers ranging from small indie developers to leading global video gaming companies. Our most important customers right now are from UK, France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, US, China and Korea.

The Need: Finding the Correct Influencers to Promote Games Globally.

Influencers are the gatekeepers with unique access to gamers. But there are millions of YouTube channels and channels on platforms like Twitch and Nico Nico (Japan), all of which cover gaming topics. And influencers can make or break a game. Even respected influencers can make mistakes that have the potential to ruin a game brand image. For instance, the YouTube influencer PewDiePie had millions of followers, and was on track to become the face of YouTube's new Red streaming services, had influencer contracts with Google and Disney. Until he made anti-Semitic comments on his Youtube channel.

The challenge is to identify the influencer channels that have promising viewer groups for the particular game of the game publisher. There is a need for a quick and reliable way to identify the best influencer channels across the world. They create Let's Plays or other material they post on their YouTube channel or social media to review games.

Our Solution GameInfluencer connects game publishers with the best fitting influencers on YouTube, twitch and other platforms to drive app installs, boost app store rankings and create brand awareness.

Our ultimate objective is to become the global market leader in automated gaming influencer marketing campaigns and to gain and retain a 20% market share. More importantly, we are at a crucial moment with a high probability of new entrants and EU funding will allow us to shorten the time to market and reach our goal faster without giving our potential competitors time to catch up. In this way, we can play an important part in creating the European video gaming success story.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We conducted a technological and economic feasibility study to refine our understanding of our product-market fit and of key risks and their mitigation. We have studied the technological challenge of the ‘global game influencer sector’ around which our platform is structured and evaluated our business model options. We conducted an in-depth analysis of the global video games advertising market and made a reassessment of market needs. Finally, we established a roadmap for further technological development and the commercial exploitation and have set up a workplan including work packages, deliverables, milestones, interdependencies, and Gantt chart for our Gameinfluencer Phase2 project. We have summarised the results of our Feasibility study into a Business plan. Furthermore, we took advantage of the Phase1 business coaching.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The final GameInfluencer platform will be beyond the European state of the art as we combine the international dimension with a specialization on gaming and directly connecting game publishers with influencers. We will be an international matchmaking platform that joins self-booking capabilities with multi-channel network characteristics.

Video Games Can Help Kids in School
• They learn social skills as 70% of gamers play with friends who are in the same room.
• They improve their critical thinking and reading comprehension skills.
• Video games enable individually paced learning, teach new tech skills and offer a fluid and literary-like engagement with ethically- and morally-complicated situations.

Economic Importance of Games in Europe

From an economic standpoint, the European gaming industry generates €20 billion sales. Therefore, it enjoys the support of national programs such as in France, where game companies receive tax credits as 150 new jobs are created every month. In the UK, there are over 2,000 game companies employing 12,100 people, which is why the UK government has launched the Video Games Tax Relief in 2014. Germany offers numerous incentives for all gaming companies - regardless of whether they are from Germany or otherwise.

The overall objective of the project is to finalize the GameInfluencer marketplace platform, so we can open it to demand (game publishers) and supply (influencers). We will achieve this by scaling our existing platform that we are currently using internally to automate a large part of our work into a fully-fledged marketplace.

The expected outcome of the GameInfluencer Project will be the fully market-ready GameInfluencer platform with all functionalities necessary according to the Feasibility Study in Phase I.

Gameinfluencer LOGO