iGB North America magazine IGBNA Aug/Sep | Page 17

Compliance and Technology

“Expect to enter full 3D world casinos together with
friends online and playing slot-machines that are
impossible to build in real life. The rise of VR and AR
will further enhance the immersive experience.”

hand, meaning WebGL projects were more of
a demo-scene for coders than an enabler for
creative people.
By using tools and platforms such as Goo
Create, Sketchfab or Playcanvas, the tech is
finally made accessible for designers using
a workflow they are used to from working in
Flash Studio or Unity. Drag and drop models
and images into the web based tool, add
interactivity with a few clicks, publish, get
the ad tag, done ;-)
Does this mark the beginning of the
end for Flash?
Yes, and it has been going on ever since
Apple chose to not allow it in iOS. People are
looking for a true “write once, run anywhere”
solution, and HTML5 with WebGL truly
offers such a solution.
The switch is being escalated by
companies like Google who will now
automatically pause Flash ads to save on
battery life in their mobile Chrome browser.
Also, last year saw both Chrome and Firefox
start blocking plugins for security reasons,
making HTML5-based apps the clear winner
in terms of reach.
Where do iGaming companies rank in
terms of adoption of this tech?
They are definitely first movers, especially
on the digital marketing and gamification
side. To be visible in this very crowded
space you need to be an early adopter and
innovate, which we have seen clearly across
this field. We’re working closely with many
of the most successful iGaming operators in

Europe and the interest and adoption rate
is amazing.
How can we expect to see WebGL
impacting the creative and product
development of iGaming operators?
More immersive and visually breathtaking
products, resulting in more engaging
applications. We’re seeing ads generate CTRs
of 1-14% with high levels of acquisition for
the clients but also very high interaction
metrics for branding campaigns.
I also think it’s opening up for a lot of new
possibilities for iGaming companies to reach
their customers in new, more engaging ways.
Not just for ads and campaigns, but also
for the entire product portfolio of iGaming
companies. Expect to enter full 3D world
casinos together with friends online and
playing slot-machines that are impossible to
build in real life. The rise of VR and AR will
further enhance the immersive nature of the
experience, and our platform will support
that tech out of the box.
So, how much longer on average
do consumers spend engaging and
interacting with creative developed
using WebGL, compared to older
technologies?
I don’t think WebGL itself drives engagement,
it’s just an enabler. Engagement comes
from innovative, interactive experiences,
gamification if you’d like, and by providing
entertainment across all the devices
consumers use. It still needs creativity and
great design to work.

But we’ve seen that well-designed
WebGL experiences drive significantly
more engagement time (up to 10x) as well
as campaign/brand recollection (~50%
increase), and this is especially true on
mobile devices where an entirely new level of
interaction and gamification now is possible.
Gamification, personalisation,
engagement... why have these themes
or elements become so integral to
Internet innovations (yours included)
of late?
Keeping the attention of the Internet
generation, which has been overfed with
information and impressions, be it ads or not,
is an increasingly hard task. The only way
to grab interest today is to make people take
part in the impressions, through interactivity
and gamification and by making apps hit
home on a personal and social level. For ads,
you also need to hook people in new ways
since we have become trained to recognise
and disregard their typical formats. As
an example, on mobiles we always advise
companies to engage people through the
gyro to show users that they are affecting the
experience without even having to click.

Rikard Herlitz is the CTO and
co-founder of Goo Technologies.
He has 15+ years in the gaming
and 3D visualization industries,
developing 3D engines and tools.
He lives for creating visually breathtaking
applications that make people go wow.

iGam