Joining me for this episode is Cary Tilds, Chief Strategy and Operations Officer at Frameplay. Cary and I discuss the future of advertising, how to make it a better experience for consumers, and why it's incredibly important to make it feel natural to not disturb the gaming experience. Cary explains to me that the combination of these factors is what forms intrinsic advertising, a way to tell stories that feels good for both the consumer and the brand or company. We also dive into how advertising and storytelling is going to change with the development of Metaverse experiences.

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And for our new listeners. Welcome. I hope you enjoy. This

week's guest is the wonderful Carrie tells chief strategy and

operations officer at frame play. Carrie, welcome to the

show. To start, I would love for you to give the audience a bit

about yourself and your background so we can get to know

you.

Thank you so much. I was pretty excited when I've

reached out to you because I'm a big fan. So I'm and fan girling

right now, as I get to do this experience with you. So just

that's worth noting, um, gosh, I've been in technology and

innovation for a really long time, I worked for very large

advertising companies like WPP, one of the most noteworthy roles

I had was chief innovation officer there. And I was lucky

enough to work at a joint venture owned by Ford Motor

Company for a couple of years. And now I work at a in game ad

tech company called frame play. So kind of crossed the gamut of

of a lot of different things all with the same theme of

innovation, and technology, creating beautiful experiences

for brands, you know, startups etc.

We just want to make a note for all the

listeners out there that Kerry actually reached out to me via

LinkedIn, and sent me a really warm and kind message. And I

just as someone who hesitates to reach out, I very much

appreciate when people make that first step. So thank you for

doing that. Because it can often lead to really, really great

things. And I'm so happy to have you on I'm so happy that you did

that. Yeah. And

that's connections are are like that, right? When you

just, you know, try to make an authentic connection and say, I

think we have mutual, you know, interests and why don't we get

together and chat?

Yes, then I think that it can be often daunting to

kind of take that step into reach out. But it also leads to

really fruitful things. So I'm very appreciative that that you

decided to do that. And I encouraged my listeners to do

their shot on LinkedIn and reach out to some folks that are

interested in what they do. And one of the other things that we

talked about when I previously met you, and you've just gone

into this a little bit with giving your background was that

you, you kind of made this big jump into gaming. So you'd had

the advertising experience and had done a lot with innovation

and technology. But what made you want to kind of pursue

gaming at a higher level, what opportunities Did you

see, both certainly, I grew up with games in my life, I

was very lucky. We didn't, you know, have a lot necessarily,

but we certainly always had some sort of gaming, you know,

console in our home. And so I you know, grew up as a young

player age playing, you know, Donkey Kong and Frogger. And

then obviously, it evolved from there. And I was one of those

parents who was very proactive about having my kids play games.

I always thought it was a fantastic creative environment

and experience for them. So I was always a big fan of gaming.

So there's that. But when I met the Met the founders of the

company and heard about what they were doing, I immediately

knew that this was a gap that hadn't yet been filled. I had

been through all of the other digital channels before starting

with the transition and growth and development of search, you

know, in the years of mobile and social and video and

programmatic and big data and all those good things. And I

hadn't had an experience with some gaming early on when I led

digital media strategy for Ford Motor Company. We did some early

gamer gaming campaigns and I had a I had a brilliant strategist,

I was lucky enough to work with my team. But those were, you

know, hard coded type of experiences they were a little

more challenging to deal with. And when I when I known about

massive we had we had worked with massive here and there

throughout the years. Throughout my career at the agency. I had

that experience too. So I realized when I met the founders

that this had been such an untapped marketplace, and I'm an

innovator that's I've spent my whole career you know, filling

filling the gap and helping people cross the chasm. So I

knew right away that this was the opportunity for me all those

roads led to me jumping in with both feet going from big

companies to start up, it just made total sense.

And how did you get into the position you're

currently at with brain play?

Yeah, it's funny when I met Jonathan, especially the

CEO, I told him, this is actually another kind of career

advice, I guess, I told him that he had a CMO who CMOS, luckily,

I've been able to interact with them a little bit, he was

stepping on to do something else. And they wanted me to take

the CMO role. And I said, I certainly, you know, can do that

I said, but I'm going to do five other things for you, too. And

so we define the chief strategy and operations role, mainly

because I really did want to lean in and do not just, you

know, marketing, but also strategy and operations and set

the company up for success, I had that background. So that was

probably the third or fourth time in my career where I was

lucky enough to just define the role that I thought I

authentically do, that would bring the best out of me, and

also allow me to help contribute, you know, to the

company in the most meaningful way. So that's how that's how

the role came to be. That's

really great advice. One of our previous

guests, at one time said, Never be your company's best kept

secret. And I think one of the ways you can do that is by

setting out from day one, what you're looking to do and how

your skills kind of match that. So I think that's, that's great

advice. And again, you're in the right environment. Of course,

that helps a lot. It does.

It helps a lot when you work for a company where you can

be authentic you and that's the whole manner.

Oh, yeah. And where Management supports that.

I want to shift gears just a little bit and talk about what

you do with advertising and marketing and how you take a

creative and innovative approach to that. Over the past couple

years, we've definitely seen a lot of negativity surrounding

digital ads. Gamers, especially are known to be a fickle

audience. And targeted ads on social media have come up in

everything from news stories to congressional hearings to think

people's moms on Facebook have even probably shared some, some

issues that they have with targeted ads. And it's

definitely hard to remember why advertising is such a huge part

of our lives these days, and why it's not all bad news. But I

would love to hear from someone who was looking at this industry

and trying to bring Authenticity to it. What excites you about

working in advertising?

Yeah, for sure. And I think that the first part of

that answer, and then I'll I'll end with what excites me is the

premise that games are funded, sometimes by people paying, but

sometimes they're free to play a lot of times free to play. And

the idea that we as you know, the gaming community want to

have, you know, more content, more games, etc requires us to

have funding models and current monetization models are being

challenged by the fragmentation and the in the changes in the

industry related to cookies, and and mobile IDs, and privacy, and

all of those things are important topics. And so when

you think about new monetization strategies, it's really about

supporting the game development, gaming community. But really, at

the center of that is making sure the game experiences taken

care of, you know, gamers don't want when they're actively

playing the game, they don't want to be disrupted. They want

the performance and the experience of the game to be

amazing. And so how do you the goal is to determine how you can

put brand messaging in that environment in an authentic way,

without disrupting the performance of this experience

in the game. Honestly, that should be the same exact goal is

all advertising. It shouldn't be just related to video games.

Video gamers are, I would say, the most discerning crowd on the

planet, they you know, they care greatly about their content

experience as they should. But what if you thought about that

exact philosophy? To the rest of advertising? What if you put the

content first, what if you put the experience first? What if

you really thought about the context in a much more

meaningful way rather than thinking about it as a targeting

tactic? You thought about it as actually how does your brand

message resonate in this environment? What do I need to

do differently as a brand marketer in order to truly show

up in this environment in the more meaningful way and what

gets me excited about advertising is solving those

complex problems solving the complex problem of context

content creative, so that ultimately the consumer or the

game or in this case, is thought of first and that last in so

that's sometimes a hard problem. Sometimes people get lost in you

know, the doing the day to day operation of digital Marketing

and they, they sometimes forget that it's actually the consumer

experience at the end that matters. And that's what will

pay out for the brand in the end. So that's what gets me

excited every day. So think about that complex problem

solving.

And want to dig, dig deeper on this, because the

question of authenticity and how to authentically reach gamers

comes up quite a lot. I, the word authenticity gets tossed

around in the gaming industry a lot, I think, I think it's, it's

becoming one of those kind of buzzwords where I think people

have a good, there's a good heart behind it. But I don't

know that the word holds all the meaning that it used to, if

everyone is trying to be authentic, but also trying to

sell an experience or a product, I think I think that it can, it

can all get convoluted. And in a recent blog post, which we'll

link in the show notes, I think that you framed authenticity in

a new way that I found much more compelling personally, and you

use the word seamless, and the idea of a seamless experience,

maybe rather than a completely authentic experience. Again,

these words they change in their meaning, but I feel as if when

it comes to advertising, seamless experiences may be of

more important than authenticity fully. But how do you weigh

those two things? And what does this seamless experience mean to

you? That's, that's

great. Thank you so much for First of all, her

really, um, you know, understanding the environment is

the first part of what I mean by that. And we've done a

significant amount of work with the IB, PE and the IB us to

break down what in game advertising actually means, for

example, and, you know, up until this year, it was basically a

big, you know, bucket of stuff. So when I first started at free

play, and I told people what I did, they like, okay, like

Twitch. And I would say, No, Twitch is great. twitches,

people watching people play games, what I do is work with

game developers to put ads in their games for people who play

games. And what the IB work really did was start to break

those, those environments down into much more meaningful

components. So there's a difference between people who

watch people play games, and people who play games, there's a

difference between ads that might be around or next to a

game, when you pause the game, you're either in between levels,

you finished it, you know, whatever the case may be. And

then when people are actually actively playing the game,

they're in full attention about folding their laundry, they're

not multitasking, they're literally immersed in that

world. Intrinsic end game advertising is is is a much

more, you know, meaningful experience and different

experience than the others. And so when you think about the word

seamless, what what that means in all of those environments,

something very different. treating those environments

differently, will allow the brand marketer or the brands to

be authentic, but be integrated into the environment or the

experience that's bespoke to that experience. And that's what

we need to do as an industry is start to break down the

experiences and not kind of do this whole kind of peanut butter

approach. Is that what they call it? To gaming that really,

again, educate yourself learn so that when you go into these

environments, and you think about them discreetly, and your

ads become seamless?

Okay, and you've used this common Trinsic

advertising, I believe you did define it before, but can you

just reiterate what that means to you exactly what it means?

Yeah, I particularly like the Don't be a click head movement.

And that's a very clever pun. But yeah, and I just want to

make sure that everyone it myself included, understands

what the exact definition of intrinsic advertising is, and

what it means

for the industry. Frank plays certainly, you know, came

out with this, get this word in this meeting, when we first

launched our company. So the meaning was really debated

thoughtfully and carefully before the word was chosen, at

least by the founders, and the founding team. And the goal is

to think about the idea of the word intrinsic means natural,

naturally placed inside the game. And there's another.

There's another add context in the industry, our writer, it's

called native. And that's really for more web based or app based

ads. But intrinsic is meant to delineate from web and app based

you know, ads meaning intrinsically or naturally

inside of the game, it is officially now the new ad

context for ads that are placed inside the actual environment

itself. Versus around or next to the game. It's officially the ad

context of VIP, as of last year. So that's what it means

naturally placed inside the environment of the game.

Gotcha. And so that is just so that I make sure

I'm crystal clear. That's the difference between say, I don't

know, I play puzzle games a lot. So let's say a banner on the

bottom of the puzzle game and like maybe an item or something

that is representative of, of the thing that's being

advertised in the actual game that I can drag when I'm

creating the puzzle, or whatever it may be.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the the ad, the ad that might,

you know, kind of like flow up or pop up, isn't, you know,

integrated into the actual game design. That's how we think

about it is integrating it into the design. We have wonderful

games in our network. And you know, one of them is a town, and

you flip houses. And part of the design of the town, you have

billboards in the town, and you have signage in the town. And

when you're walking through the town, you're going to see

advertising, so instead of fake ads, it'd be better to just

have, you know, Pizza Hut or progressive shirring. And, or if

you're playing, you know, golf or tennis, you often see, you

know, ads placed appropriately throughout the course, you know,

throughout your experience, especially if you're playing in

a tournament. So that's what we mean place naturally are

intrinsically inside the environment itself. The game

designer places the ad, that's the beauty of this whole thing,

because they're designing the game. They're thinking through

where does this make sense in context of the actual experience

of the game of the design or the context of the game just as much

as they think about putting a tree on the corner of whatever

the experience is, they'll think about, I should probably put

advertising, and why not have intrinsic in game advertising?

It helps you monetize the game.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay. Like, I like

the way that you put that zooming out to the company side,

we've talked about the developers in the gaming

audience. What opportunities should companies be on lookout

for to make it a seamless experience the seamless tripping

over my words there? And what shouldn't they do?

So when you mean companies, do you mean game

developers or advertisers?

I think both. I would like to hear from both

perspectives. You know, what, what can cause like, as you're

saying, you know, maybe you're walking through town, and

there's a Pizza Hut. And that makes a lot of sense. Because

that might happen in the real world.

Hungry for pizza?

Who isn't? But there might be some other

company where it wouldn't actually, I think the auto

insurance is particularly clever, because if any, everyone

sees a bunch of auto insurance and advertisements everywhere,

so this is actually be a new way to consume them. But I'm trying

to think and I can't come up with an example on the spot. But

there's ways or things, obviously, where companies

wouldn't it wouldn't make sense in this particular context of

that guess. Oh, yes. How were you kind of able to do that

matchmaking process where it's like, okay, if you're in a town,

it makes sense to have rest of auto insurance. But maybe if

you're playing an outerspace game, there might be something

else that maybe fits that theme a little bit better. Yeah. So

from both the game developers perspective, as in keeping their

games free, and learning how to properly advertise in including

advertising in a way that is intrinsic, and popular with

their audience to continue playing. And from company's

perspective, we're looking to advertise in the proper worlds.

How do you go about that kind of matchmaking process? Yes. Is

there anything that stands out as like a not necessarily

anything screenplays done, but any other ad campaigns that

you've seen other places, or companies where you thought that

really misses the mark?

I've got all sorts of answers. And also, this is good

for games that aren't just free to play. You know, certainly we

have clients that do charge, but maybe they don't charge as much

because they can offset it with with them. With the new

monetization strict screen stream. I'm tripping over my

words. So you think about the development process, at least

for our philosophy, the number one thing we do is we work hand

in hand with them. And we they certainly have complete control.

They are the designers of the game. So we help guide and

advise them, we want to make sure that they put ads in the

game where they naturally belong, where they intrinsically

belong. So that's really important because at the end of

the day, it's about optimizing the experience, the joy, the

delight, sometimes the competition, whatever you're

playing a game for. So at the core of this is getting the

actual design right and the Making sure that you're putting

those placements in the right spot. The other part of it is

making sure you put them in a spot where people will see them.

Our technology actually calculates whether or not you've

use us, as the player see the ad, we have a 3d viewability

capability that constantly calculates that. So we're going

to be able to give our game developers the feedback on

whether or not the placements in their game were seen. They want

them to be seen because they make money. And they also want

to make sure that the brands are happy. So that's part of that

journey is is you know, very hands on QA, those processes,

these are oftentimes very, you know, multi year works of art.

And making sure that we get that right is really, really

important. I've seen on the game developer side I've seen where

we've, it's not been our technology, maybe the technology

isn't, is is ready, it might actually deliver ads that aren't

actually showing off, it might be with a black box or

something. So making sure that the tech, the tech is tested,

and properly renders ads, because these are real time live

streaming experiences. And so do it, you having the game

developers, they do that they do due diligence with us, they want

to make sure that you know, our technology, you know, our frame

per second load is very, very low. All those things that they

should do, you know, with us, and I think they found you know

that some some hiccups along the way with some with some other

approaches. On the advertiser side, we actually have a

different creative standard. So think about a web banner ad.

Okay, what we see in a web banner ad is install now click

here, some calls to action, or might be a ton of text, or it

might be you know, just a lot of stuff going on. Because

typically people they're, you know, staring at a web page or

whatever. And again, you're constantly moving, you're

playing, it's an environment. So what you want to do first of

all, is make sure the ad it doesn't have all the stuff in

it, that it's easy to understand. It gets your message

of point, message and point across very clearly. So you're

going to highlight logos, you're going to highlight in the DRI,

you're going to highlight your brand colors, you're going to

keep tech text limited, and you're certainly not going to

say click here while they're actively playing a cane. At

least for now, because that experience would actually stop

there, you know, stop the game flow, there are appropriate

appropriate places to certainly be able to click on on ads and

games, but not during absolute act of gameplay.

That's what drives me crazy.

drive everybody crazy. So we do work hand in hand with

the you know, the world's biggest brands to make sure that

their ads are redone and streamlined. The other thing is

high quality, higher quality, you know, if you look at these

games, they're built on game engines that are rendering the

imagery and on devices that can take much higher quality

experiences than maybe web pages and apps today. So we do ask for

you know, higher pixel density and a couple of other things to

make sure that the ad quality looks as good as the tapestry in

which thin. So, so that's a big deal, too. And I we've seen some

missteps, again, from some other, you know, instances

outside of our, our platform in our network where they might

accept her web based ads, and they just, they just don't look

good. Just you know, as is so so we take a lot of pride in

getting the tech right and getting the creative, right. And

when we know we do that the gamer is serviced, you know,

first and foremost with the beautiful experience, and then

the brand and the game developer when accordingly in that order,

as someone who has experienced the black box that's

like a game or restart a game as a result of them not loading

properly. I think that that's great. That's extremely

important. I like that you've pointed out some things that are

differentiating, because I think that that's a better way of

framing it. But how have gamers responded to this type of

advertising? I'm particularly interested in this because the

best response to be when what to me, looking at this as a gamer

would be no response. As Yes. Not that. Yeah. But they don't

necessarily notice that. Yes, yeah. Not natural or intrinsic

advertising, right, that it's just it's part of the experience

that's in there. And it kind of just works. And so but that

makes your job a little bit hard because you're not necessarily

getting feedback on Yeah, this is a great, great placement, you

know, so how are you able to keep track of all of that?

Yes, that's a great question. So number one,

certainly, yes. One of the things that especially early on

when we watch one of the world's biggest gaming studios was that

we got zero feedback from them, you know, usually when they

launch other features or other types of monetization things

they'll you know, they definitely will get feedback. We

got none, which was what we got some from them saying they got

mad, which was good. But we do you get feedback brands do ask

us for that. And we work with companies like comScore, we do

very methodical Brand Lift studies, where we ask people,

are you a gamer? Number one, you know, do you play games? Do you

specifically play these games? Have you played these games

where ads are in exposed versus control? And one of the

questions aside from mobile ad recall and purchase intent,

which are standard brand metrics that we do ask them is do like

the sponsorship of the game, do like the fact that this

particular brand was in the game. And we have seen plus 22

plus 40%, lift? In that answer. And in the other answers,

because they do value it, they think it makes the game better.

They think it improves the experience. It's not disrupting

it makes it more real, versus you know, fake friends fake

Fridays pizza at Riverside Drive, or what? I hope that's

not a real thing. But But that's, that's what we do. And

so we do we do a lot of research like that we have a lot more

coming out in the next, you know, two months that we'll talk

about in a later time. But we do ask them that. And they do tell

us, you know, gamers aren't shy at all. So

they will let you know, best and worst qualities.

They'll let you know, which is wonderful.

Yeah, I definitely, yes. I think that we

have all heard instances of the gamer community reacting

negatively to things. Yes. Yeah. So yes, it is strange to say

that no feedback is good feedback. But when it comes to

this particular industry, that's very true. So I suppose it's a

good thing that you haven't heard anything thus far. That's

that's very encouraging. I wanted to get into a little bit

about diversity, equity inclusion as well, because I

know from your point of view, and we've talked about this

previously, but why has it taken so long for the advertising

industry to recognize that gamers as diverse as the human

race, because over 2 billion people in the world play world

play games, and there's only 7 billion people in the world? So

presumably, there's a large percentage of the population

playing games. The Why do you think is advertising? Why do you

think it's taken advertisers so long to recognize that and to

expand the type of experiences they're building in game and the

ways that they're trying to reach both in game to actually

see that there's a wide variety of audiences, they can reach?

Yeah, I think, first of all, if you talk about what's

happening outside of gaming, and that helps us a little bit. So

you know, even if so 20 years ago, of course, the

multicultural agencies exist, even more so. And that was good

that they were they were, you know, sad, but true, considered

boutique type agencies in a way of niche type agencies. And the

reason I was thinking through this question, the reason I

think that was at the time, and even up until somewhat recently,

is because the advertising industry craved scale. They

crave scale first, if they can reach as many people that

possibly can buy their product at the same time without doing

very much different. They can have their scale, be efficient

scale. I think what they've learned over the years with a

lot of the cultural movements that have happened for us, you

know, I don't need to name all of them, many of them are top of

all of our minds. But I think the idea of scale is is

important, but but scale and context with the context overlay

is incredibly important. And when you think about context in

the right context, then you definitely need to start talking

about Dei, in media and media reaching reaching people. People

are not all the same, we are, in fact different. Who knew. And so

I think the industry has definitely done a lot of really

valuable things. I even see programmatic, you know, specific

programmatic PMPs now being started by many of the holding

companies that have that that actually directly you know,

serve underserved communities, etc, like that. So I think

there's been I think there's been movement just in general,

in the advertising industry. We have a lot to go in the movie

industry, which actually gaming and the entertainment you know,

the movie industry are very similar in so many ways. In the

movie industry in the last five years, you've seen so many Any

specific, you know, actors especially actor stand up and

saying I want to create an entire production house just to

serve this community or that community. And that didn't

happen two years ago either. So we've got some really good

momentum in general by the like, it's pretty new and recent. Now,

when you when you talk about gaming, essentially, almost 3

billion people, so some will have, let's say, the population

on the planet,

please head over to I was thinking is actually

2.7, I should have said really

will be a staunch defender of that number. So so

the so the gaming industry has has been in its own bubble,

let's just call it what it is. We've been on bubble for a very

long time. And you know, so the whole again, over here, the

whole world was doing all the things I just explained, we're

getting better. We're working on that. And then the gaming

industry was in its own little bubble, not, you know, following

some of that, but we've all read the headlines not following some

of those things do and in the wrong sort of ways. So. So I do

believe that the current is there, the current is there, I

believe that we have the right setup, I believe we have the

consumer or the gamer standing up and saying no, I want you to

treat me differently. I want representation, I want to see

someone that looks like me, in your content, content, movies,

TV shows gaming. So I think gaming is going to benefit from

that kind of general wave of change, which is fantastic. But

there's a lot of work to do in the gaming industry to keep up

with the that current because, you know, there's a lot of

legacy that's needs to be sorted. I would say.

I think that that's been the overwhelming

sentiment is well, first of all, it's been more so about for the

people that I've interviewed the principles of dei and the

incorporation of them. There's been issues with timing, both

than that it's taken far too long, and progress has been far

too slow. So I think that you're right, you know, you're saying

dei companies in consulting firms started, you know, 20

years ago. And yet, we're it took some horrendous events. And

yes, worldwide, just absolutely terrible, a whole pandemic, for

everyone to sit down and start listening to the folks that have

been shouting it from rooftop for years. Yeah, I think that

yeah, I think you represent a fairly, a fairly agreed upon

view that, yes, we are happy that there's movement, we're

happy that this current exists. However, the speed is taken us

to start listening to these folks. And the speed at which

we're implementing change can be very frustrating. Yeah. How do

you think about that when you're creating these experiences? And

when you're choosing people to work with? Or when you're

working on a project? Like how are you kind of thinking about

bringing in di and I guess

this current? Yes, I, you know, I have to tell you, I

was never I didn't I didn't in my earlier career, join a

women's groups, for example. Why didn't I, I don't know, I hit

kids, I was busy, whatever. I'm not sure why I didn't do it. But

I am now a massive believer in joining groups where people can

help you understand the issues better than you know, basically

shedding light on the things that you just don't know. And so

I'm really thankful that through this job, I was able to join

kind of a women in games leadership group, that's, you

know, CEOs, venture capital C suite type people, we talk about

this topic, every two weeks, we commit to each other, to show up

and create an environment where we can say hard things. And I

would say creating an environment where you can say

hard things say I'm struggling with this, I don't know how to

solve that. The second part of that is create an environment

where we support each other, hey, GDC is coming to town.

We're doing a panel right now. It's not diverse. We need

diversity on the panel, reaching out having a network that you

can create that you can reach out and and just do those things

and make sure that you're being purposeful in everything that

you're doing to make sure that your fabric is truly a fabric of

you know, all sorts of perspectives, cultures, etc. At

work at frankly, you know, when I joined there were only a

handful of people and honestly, it was nearly all Caucasian.

Again, it was very, very early, and we made an absolute,

purposeful plan to have Have as much diversity in the company as

possible, even though we're under 50 employees. And I'm

really proud of the progress that we've made. You know, I'm

sitting here, which is great, but we have an incredible team

of men and women and different cultures. Are we perfect with

our diversity numbers? No. But we make every effort in our

hiring and our interviewing, making sure our candidate

selection is diverse, making sure we're looking at different

pools of talent, that's another thing you have to do is not

always look in the same spot. Because because that actually

makes us a better company. The data is there that suggests that

our performance is better when when we have different

perspectives. So So those are the things I think about, you

know, on this topic, and I'm still learning, you know, never

think that you know, everything. I think that's the number one

thing, and this is God, we don't walk in other people's shoes. So

you've got to be able to put yourself in positions to listen

to them, have them tell their story.

I like this piece of advice a lot to find a group

of people that can not only help you further understand issues,

but support you as you work through them. Yeah, I think that

a lot of what you're talking about takes bravery. And it

takes recognizing when you're inside of your own box, and it

takes stepping out of it, it can be really, really difficult. But

if you have a group of people where you feel you can be honest

and get the support they need certainly makes it easier. I

also will mention that I had a previous guest to set. And I

feel like I've referenced a lot of past episodes here. But it's

great. I love being able to bring people on and then talk

about all the great conversations I've had and work

some of the lessons that I've learned by doing this. And but

she had very succinctly said that dei equals ROI. And I

thought that was a great way of saying it and you have further

proven her point there. Yes, or Yes. And so I do want to talk

about how this all relates to the metaverse and the

opportunities you see there. Metaverse is kind of this big. I

don't know. I don't know exactly what to call it. But it's a big

lump of confusion in terms of ideas and future tech. And

there's a lot of possibility. But there's also a lot of

pushback. And there's just there's a lot of excitement

around this idea. And I think there's just as much skepticism

which, which probably means that something is going to happen

with it right? You will be right and someone will be wrong. Or

all the big group of us sitting in the middle will say okay,

yeah, we thought something was going to happen. And so how are

you thinking about taking your ideas and your strategy into the

space? Taking ad ad tech into the space and incorporating dei

principles and all of that good stuff. So what's the metaverse

mean to you? What are you thinking about?

Yeah, first, I want to just mention to you about the

hype, because it's a perfect part of it. And then of course,

I'll answer the question. So when social first, you know,

started to grow, one of the biggest concepts in social was

something called the Open Graph. In the Open Graph, basically was

Facebook and others and allowing for interoperability, and also

basically, kind of user development, user content

development, whether that be called UGC, or just they allowed

you to develop, you know, other applications that connected in

and leverage the Open Graph. So it's a that's a really important

point to think about, because in the beginning, people didn't

understand the power of that, which fundamentally fueled, you

know, a significant amount of the communication and content of

the of the internet and of course of mobile applications.

So we think about the idea of that concept. And then you think

about how that's being applied to some of the content concepts

of the of the metaverse or just flat three. Overall, because the

metaverse would be, you know, one, one component of the

concept of web three, I happen to be a co founder of the web

three Marketing Association as well. And so we think about

these concepts in concept in in kind of the context of web three

transition, Metaverse being a virtual experience, an elevated

virtual experience within Web three, that it has other

elements like, you know, new currencies, new data and

technology kind of platforms and approaches crypto blockchain,

new forms of creative that are etc. So the metaverse is is, you

know, certainly I think, you know, for shapes and forms of

the concept of the metaverse will absolutely happen. So

that's that, for me is not really a debate but the

metaverse versus metaverse. Life experiences I think are what

people should be debating the true capability for the

metaverse meaning one single, you know, decentralized. world,

you know, is a wonderful vision, probably for science fiction,

but Metaverse experiences that that do interoperate and

connect, I think, you know, certainly are the near term

reality that will happen if they already do. How does gaming

relate to the metaverse? Certainly frame players, as

mentioned, you know, is a leader in intrinsic in game

advertising. And as mentioned how we do that is our technology

works with game engines, and for students of the metaverse. If

you're a student of the metaverse, you know that game

engines are basically the primary drivers of the content

experiences today. They involve lots of different technology

components for the novice to understand. They have basically

creative libraries that help read render the pictures, they

have audio capabilities that help you know the sound, render

in concert with the pictures. In the experience, they have

artificial intelligence, they have, you know, some physics

engines, etc, to help everything kind of work together. So this

is different than websites and that cheese, people's cheese has

to move there. And they need to understand how game engines

work. game engines also power games. And so we are experts at

serving ads inside of virtual environments that are games.

That is our bread and butter. Today, we're very focused on

that we believe fully that the metaverse and video games are

mutually exclusive, but complimentary. And we think that

they will forever be best friends in concert with each

other, but they definitely serve two different purposes. And we

are very, very focused on making sure that the experience and the

performance of the gaming environment that's powered by

game engine is flawless for the game for the gamer for the game

developer and for the brand. And certainly your question was how

does that apply to metaverse? Well, of course, if you have a

Metaverse based on game engine mechanics, then there will be

opportunities for you know that tech to translate into those

environments in meaningful ways. But we're focused today on

getting the games right?

Like this distinction of the metaverse,

capital T capital M versus Metaverse experiences. I have

written this in the notes. But there's a recent article about

STEAM founder Gabe Newell, basically just being so grumpy

about the metaverse and it really kind of got me down. And

I've heard so many people say this is Second Life and all this

stuff. Gabe Newell made a good point of basically saying, you

know, immersive experiences and video gaming has been around for

a very long time. And I do tend to agree with that, I think

where he falls short is not recognizing how those

experiences might change and expand adapt, which I think is

something that it sounds like you are excited about.

I'm very, I'm very excited about that. Obviously,

as a lifelong innovator, you know, I always love a good

challenge. And as I mentioned, context, creative, you know,

content and consumer. And when you get those things, right,

especially in you know, really complex virtual environments,

you're going to win every time. But there are some real big

challenges with the metaverse yourself to solve in terms of

just you know, we need much more compute power. You know, there's

a lot out there, we talk about the idea of an energy drain, you

know, with all of these beautiful visions of the virtual

world, it takes a lot of energy and do we really want to, you

know, go that route without having some solutions for that,

which I'm sure somebody will solve. So there's some big big

challenges still to set forth. That is a big

rabbit hole to go down, which we do not have time

for. And before we get into our last segment, I'd like to do a

short summary of some of the stuff that we've we've talked

about. In the podcast so far, one of the first things you

opened with is that you're very as a parent, very pro game, as a

as a way to have a creative outlet, which I know that that

was mentioned in passing. But I think that's very important for

all the folks out there. And when you when we talked about

your job and your your development, your transition,

one of the things I thought was great was, if it's possible, you

should always define the role that you want to do. You should

if you are in a good environment, and you have the

right management then to go for it and put yourself out there,

figure out what your best match for and do the best that you can

for the people that are also supporting you on the other

side. There is a difference in people who play games versus

people who watch people play games. They require different

advertising and every environment is kind of discrete,

you have to think about it in its own way. that brought us

into a discussion on intrinsic advertising, which are a way of

naturally placing ads inside the game is different than native.

It's meant to delineate from web and other ads. And the context

for ads placed in the environment itself is very

specific to the type of environment you start with. So

you have these kind of discrete entities where you're figuring

out how to make advertising very natural and native to the end

gaming experience. When it comes to D AI principles, there's a

general wave and undercurrent of change and or push for better

representation. But gaming has a long way to go. As you said,

we've all seen the headlines. One of the great pieces of

advice that I thought you gave was to join groups and or why

find people or form your own group to help you shed light on

things that you might not know and have difficult conversations

while also supporting each other. We ended with a short

discussion on the metaverse and I liked that you differentiated

between the metaverse, capital T capital M and Metaverse

experiences. The first may be science fiction, but the second

is real and will change and evolve as tech in gaming,

including gaming engines evolve. And then I liked your little

tagline of context, context, creative content, and consumer.

So thinking about those four things, how they all work

together, how one flows into the next. So I think that that's

going to be a lot of good lessons for people listening, I

love to end each podcast with the same the same segment, it's

called a moment of reflection, the chance just for you to think

about your career where you're at. And I would love to ask you

what is one thing you would like to tell your younger self about

getting into the gaming industry and being successful?

My younger self would, I have the opportunity to learn

basic programming. And I was in sixth grade, which was very,

very rare. And I didn't, yes, because I've been around a

really long time. But I stopped, I didn't continue with

programming. And I wasn't really offered in school, so But I, in

my younger self, if I had the opportunity to tell me, I would

say go search it out, Go Lean In harder. Now it's it's much more

readily available for younger people in school. And I don't

mean, you know, necessarily, but I value developers greatly,

obviously, that the core of our company. But what I would say is

that I would learn a lot earlier, the principles that I

could design something I could have my creative side, and I

could fill that technique at the same exact time much earlier in

my career if I would have just kept, you know, kind of bellying

and leaning into those, those both of those design principles.

And that's what I love about gaming. I'm so enamored with

creators, they are creators, and their creators that have both

these high and creative capabilities and high end

technology capabilities. Usually, one an industry has one

or the other. But to truly be, you know, brilliant developers,

you have both. And I would tell my younger self keep going,

because I love both sides of that equation for me. And, you

know, I'm really passionate about supporting others who do

that, that's really great, because I haven't

I haven't actually had a lot of people give sort of hard were

like straight. This is maybe what you should think about

advice. And I like that you're talking about how, how gaming is

really the fulcrum of creativity and art learn skills. I too wish

I had taken programming more seriously. And I always joke

about going back to school for that. I think you can be a big

writer and a big reader, I think you can actually be kind of

similar in that in that creative way and learning the language

and going through with all that. So I think that that's, that's

very fun. This is a very fun, different way of thinking about

things that I've had before, especially on this segment. So I

appreciate that. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on.

Where can people find you if you want to be found or follow free

play or follow your work?

Certainly, I mean, I'm definitely big on LinkedIn.

That's probably my primary social channel. You know,

Twitter by default, because I post everything there twice. But

definitely frame play. dG is our company's website, which is good

and Frank plan, follow free plan LinkedIn too. We tend to post a

lot. We were trying to just inspire and educate the industry

and make sure every end we get this right right in mind to make

sure everybody understands you know that if we serve the gamer

at the center, that everybody, everybody wins. So that's where

you can find us.

Thank you so much. For all of our listeners out

there. Be sure to leave those five star ratings and reviews.

Check out other holodeck media podcast. including meta business

for all the metaverse, finance stories you could ever want.

Business of esports for interviews with industry

leaders. I'm on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn at

Lindsey path. And you can catch me Wednesday nights on the

business of esports. Live after show. You can catch this podcast

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