Video game advertising

The Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab and The Sims developed the Not Creative docuseries, which follows the story of Amanda Maryanna, an up-and-coming content creator and filmmaker who needed an extra boost of inspiration when it came to exploring her own imagination. With the help of three established creatives who found their own spark through The Sims, the three-part series explains how The Sims is still inspiring and shifting culture almost 25 years after its release.

Focusing on Amanda’s creative journey, The Sims hoped to create buzz around the video game title itself, while also creating an opportunity to connect a top-of-funnel campaign to a shoppable moment on the Brand Store for the audience inspired by Amanda’s creative block. After creating the series, Brand Innovation Lab and The Sims worked together at the end of 2023 to develop buzz around the campaign.

Ahead of the release of the episodes on Fire TV and the Brand Store, the brand released teasers, Alexa-enabled audio ads, and a countdown clock on The Sims Brand Store on Amazon. Driving to the Brand Store helped create that shoppable moment that put customers just a click or two away from purchasing the video game title. But most importantly, the first phase of the campaign allowed for The Sims to engage with its fan base, while also introducing new players to the gist of the game.

Beyond the custom landing page, the campaign leaned into a fully omnichannel approach, with a custom hub available via Fire TV and an owned Fire TV channel, which holds all episodes. In addition to the Fire TV component, the campaign also included Streaming TV ads, retail placements, audio ads, and Posts driving back to the landing page. And to help inspire and meet players where they are, the campaign also included episodic watch parties on Twitch.

The results following the campaign indicated that Not Creative resonated with audiences across the board. With 409 million ad impressions and a global unique reach of over 72 million customers, the two-month campaign flight put The Sims in front of a massive audience. In a brand lift study, there was a 24-point increase in brand awareness in the U.S. and a 30-point increase in the U.K. In the U.S., 71% of those surveyed offered a positive sentiment, with a specific appreciation of how The Sims can be used to inspire creativity and how the game has real-life applications.

Created in Fortnite, Amazon Ads and Twitch introduced a series of new games within Fortnite, collectively titled The Glitch. True to its name, The Glitch may share some similarities with maps that players are familiar with, but something is a bit … off. For fans of Fortnite, The Glitch is a result of the game’s long-running hero Jonesy attempting to stream Fortnite on Twitch … but from within the world of Fortnite. This creates a multidimensional paradox that runs the risk of breaking down—or glitching—reality itself. Jonesy and players must work together to fix the world, but The Glitch is full of constant change. As the story unfolds, season by season, more is revealed … perhaps involving factions of well-known Twitch streamers and their communities, as they work with (and against) each other for victory.

The teams at Twitch and Amazon Ads leaned on the expertise of Alexander Seropian’s game studio, LookNorthWorld, to begin building out The Glitch. While Fortnite has hosted a number of collaborations in the pop culture and comic worlds, The Glitch marks a new evolution for the franchise. In The Glitch, brands have the opportunity to be featured in the gameplay, not just as a visual but functional element with incentives for players to interact with the brand.

The Glitch is available to brands who meet the threshold prerequisite—including any ad spend across any of Amazon’s advertising channels, such as Twitch, Prime Video, and more. For brands regularly advertising within the catalog of Amazon’s ad opportunities, the opportunity to come to life within The Glitch opens up a potentially massive reach.

On Twitch, the game was streamed over 42 million hours in just a few months. That level of viewership can help advertisers hoping to reach a young adult audience who have reported that they’re more receptive to advertising that dovetails seamlessly with the content they already consume.