Indy Khabra and Brad Manuel believe they can revolutionise in-game advertising for the 3 billion gamers globally.
Key Takeaways
- Livewire is a gaming marketing and game-tech company whose goal is to connect advertisers with gamers, without impacting on the gamers’ experience
- The company recently closed an oversubscribed $4.7 million Series A investment round
- The global in-game advertising market size is forecast to reach US$12.35 billion by 2028, at a CAGR of 10.7%, according to Vantage Market Research.
The Australian company that’s aiming to bridge the gap between advertisers and the 3 billion gamers globally has revealed its rapid expansion plans into the US and some European markets, after 18 months of business.
Indy Khabra and Brad Manuel launched Livewire in February 2021 – a gaming marketing and game-tech company whose goal is to connect advertisers with gamers, without impacting on the gamers’ experience.
The company recently closed an oversubscribed $4.7 million Series A investment round, backed by RealVC, with the VC firm’s managing partner Matt Berriman joining the company’s board. Now, the company has announced it will use the funding to tap into the US and DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) markets, which have highly engaged audiences in the gaming sector (Germany being the biggest market in mobile gaming in 2021, and the US the second-biggest).
“This heavily under-utilised gaming audience is a blank canvas for us to develop a unique, high impact business offering for brands and advertisers,”
Indy Khabra, Brad Manuel – co-founders, Livewire
PwC estimates the overall global gaming industry will be worth $321 billion by 2026. As the gaming industry grows, the in-game advertising industry grows, too. In fact, the global in-game advertising market size is forecasted to reach US$12.35 billion by 2028, at a CAGR of 10.7%, according to Vantage Market Research.
Livewire says it operates in ‘game-tech’ or game marketing, a new term it says it coined for the companies filling the whitespace in the gaming industry with interesting solutions. Theirs being advertising and marketing.
“We offer integrated end-to-end strategies for advertisers to connect directly with the highly engaged gaming audience, without impacting on their experiences,” Khabra and Manuel say.
Picture this: virtual in-game court signage, physical unform branding or billboards in virtual cities. So far, the company has partnered with Roblox, Activision Blizzard Media and, most recently, Australia’s National Basketball League. The company claims it has recorded over 55 billion impressions across the Livewire Ad Marketplace.
“This heavily under-utilised gaming audience is a blank canvas for us to develop a unique, high impact business offering for brands and advertisers,” the co-founders say.
Manuel previously worked with personalities in the gaming and internet culture industry at his role at Misfits Management Group. Khabra led Dentsu’s data, tech and programmatic division. After leaving in 2019, he started a digital marketing and transformation agency, consulting back to Dentsu as well as Are Media and other clients.
The pair first met at a sports marketing conference six to seven years ago, but it wasn’t until they collaborated in late 2020 on a project within gaming talent management that they realised there was a gap in the gaming marketing market. Clearly, their investors agreed.
“What Indy and Brad have achieved in such a short period of time is indicative of their experience to leverage one of the fastest growing, most lucrative industry sectors in the world The Livewire team, technology and a large and growing TAM was an opportunity irresistible to RealVC,” Berriman said.
The team has 15 staff so far, but plans to hire close to 30 new team members by March 2023. They also plan to implement a global C-suite of executives and triple its sales and support teams across the world.