American independent record label EMPIRE partnered with the world’s most advanced in-game advertising platform Anzu.io to reach gamers during the FIFA World Cup with an ad campaign for Afro pop artist Kizz Daniel’s latest single, “Cough”.
After his performance at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Kizz Daniel has become synonymous with soccer. EMPIRE, his record label, launched a cross-channel promotion to promote his new single. He performed the song live in Qatar before a crowd of soccer fans.
Anzu helped EMPIRE tap into Soccer Super Star. It is the number one mobile game in the category of sports games on iOS with over a million users monthly (Newzoo). There’s an established synergy between music and sports gamers, with Comscore data showing that players of Soccer Super Star are up to 30 times more likely to visit music-related websites, which made it a perfect fit for EMPIRE to leverage Kizz Daniel’s performance.
Using Anzu’s geo-targeting capabilities, EMPIRE was able to serve the in-game ads to players within countries that were competing in the quarter-finals of the tournament. In-game advertising with intrinsic content is well-known for its high viewability and attention. This campaign had a 91.91% success rate according to Oracle Moat.
“We previously worked with Anzu on a campaign for another artist Babyface Ray and saw huge success and interest from players for his music. When we learned that Anzu was able to bring our latest campaign to the most popular sports title on iOS and allow us to hone in on our target audience of World Cup fans, working with them again was a no-brainer,” said Peter Kadin, SVP Marketing at EMPIRE.
“Using gaming as an extension of a real-world campaign or experience is nothing new, especially in sports games, as we are used to seeing ads in these environments in the real world, and in-game advertising allows advertisers to bring their campaigns to stadiums, courts, and arenas, enhancing game realism. However, this campaign was unique because it allowed us to help EMPIRE tap into the excitement of the FIFA World Cup and expose an overlap between sports and music fans,” said Natalia Vasilyeva, EVP Marketing & Strategy at Anzu.
