IN-GAME AUDIO · BRAND AWARENESS
Fanta didn't just enter Pakistan's mobile gaming ecosystem. It dominated it — reaching 847,826 unique gamers in 30 days and delivering twice what was promised.
The Challenge
Fanta needed a high-reach brand awareness campaign timed to summer demand — but the brief from WPP Media came with a precision requirement: reach Pakistan's mobile gaming audience specifically, at a scale that mattered, with viewability standards that could be verified. Standard programmatic display was off the table. Standard social video had saturated the audience. The brief called for something inside the experience, not interrupting it.
Pakistan has an estimated 50 million mobile gamers. Most are in the 16–34 demographic that FMCG brands spend heavily to reach. Yet prior to Happy Ads' in-game partnerships, this audience was effectively invisible to brands — their gaming time represented a daily 2–4 hour block with zero brand contact. The in-game advertising format exists precisely to close this gap: ads placed as billboards inside virtual game worlds, visible during natural gameplay, unskippable, and brand-safe.
The impression goal for the campaign was 1,611,111 — a meaningful media plan allocation. The question was whether in-game delivery could not only hit that number but prove its quality: high viewability, above-benchmark CTR, and the right audience frequency for brand memory formation.
The Solution
Happy Ads executed Fanta's in-game billboard campaign via IION's in-game advertising network across Pakistan's mobile gaming ecosystem. Six creative formats were deployed — 300×250, 300×600, 320×320, 320×50, and two additional sizes — all placed as in-game billboard inventory: ads appearing as signage and branded surfaces within the virtual game world. The 300×600 half-page format outperformed all others, delivering a 3.10% CTR.
The campaign ran for 30 days from May 25 to June 23, 2026. It delivered 3,335,766 impressions — 207% of the 1.6M goal — including 1,724,655 bonus impressions provided free of charge as part of the overdelivery. Every impression was unskippable and viewable: the 97.65% viewability rate reflects the structural advantage of in-game placements over standard programmatic inventory, where average viewability runs at 50–70%.
Punjab drove 54.6% of total impressions, reflecting the province's outsized share of Pakistan's mobile gaming audience. The frequency of 3.9 exposures per unique gamer placed the campaign precisely in the optimal brand-recall building zone (3–5 exposures) identified in ad effectiveness research — enough to build memory structure without audience fatigue.
Key Results
3.33M
Impressions Delivered
207%
Of Impression Goal
2.36%
CTR (4.7× benchmark)
847K
Unique Gamers Reached
Key Insights
01
207% Delivery at Zero Extra Cost — Why In-Game Overdelivers
02
97.65% Viewability — The Format Standard Programmatic Can't Touch
Pakistan's programmatic display average viewability runs at 50–70% (industry estimates). In-game billboard placement achieves near-perfect viewability because the ad is part of the game environment — it cannot be scrolled past, minimised, or covered by another app. The 97.65% viewability rate on this campaign is not exceptional for in-game; it is the structural baseline. Every impression is genuinely seen.
03
3.9× Frequency Is the Science of Brand Memory, Not Just Reach
Each of the 847,826 unique gamers reached by Fanta was exposed an average of 3.9 times over 30 days. Academic ad effectiveness research — including the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute's work on brand salience — identifies 3–5 exposures as the sweet spot for building brand memory structures. Happy Ads optimised frequency delivery to land Fanta precisely in this zone: enough repetition to build recall, not enough to create fatigue.
