“It was never only about the CPM“: Lessons from Miniclip's Head Ball 2 takeover

Publishers have wanted brand budgets in their games for years. Getting them in is the hard part. A brand campaign has to clear the same bar as everything else in the monetization stack without disrupting the ad economy and the player experience the team has spent years tuning. It also behaves nothing like the performance and UA campaigns that most mobile games run on a day-to-day basis.

In June, DT ran a full app takeover inside Head Ball 2 for a global quick-service restaurant brand as part of their FIFA World Cup 2026 activation. The brand was built into the gameplay rather than placed around it: branded accessories and characters, avatar customization, daily rewards, custom tournament events. On peak days, more than 125,000 matches were played by people wearing or using the branded items.

At Gamesforum London in September, Kiko Untalan, Lead Publisher Account Manager, DT, sat down with Inês Rendas, Partnership Manager, Miniclip, to talk about how the campaign came together and what it took to get brand demand working across Miniclip’s portfolio.

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Kiko Untalan: For anyone who doesn’t know Miniclip, set the scene. How has brand advertising evolved in your games, and why should publishers take brand demand seriously now?

Inês Rendas: Miniclip is a global leader in mobile games, with a portfolio played by millions worldwide, including hits like Subway Surfers, 8 Ball Pool, and recent successes like Arrows.

For a while now, we’ve been paying real attention to bringing more brand demand into our games. That includes traditional campaigns using formats like rewarded video and interstitials, as well as more integrated opportunities, such as brand takeovers that feel native to the game.

It hasn’t always been easy, and a big part of making it work has been making sure these campaigns still feel right for our games. Brands are finally starting to adapt to the world of mobile gaming, rather than it always being the other way around. So the reason to take brand demand seriously is that brands are finally treating mobile gaming as a media channel.

“Brands are finally starting to adapt to the world of mobile gaming, rather than it always being the other way around.“
- Inês Rendas, Partnership Manager, Miniclip

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Brand demand doesn’t compete in auctions the way performance demand does, and it has historically appeared at lower eCPMs. What shifted the internal thinking?

It’s true that, at least for now, brand campaigns generally aren’t competitive with performance demand if you look purely at eCPMs, and we’re very aware of that. But we’ve always felt there was value in having a portion of our advertising come from campaigns that aren’t actively trying to take our players out of our games and into another one. Brand campaigns can offer a very different, and often better, experience: recognizable brands and creative designed around awareness and engagement. So for us, it was never only about comparing the eCPM of a brand impression with that of a performance one.

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The brand relationship runs on different expectations and different timelines. When you looked at doing brand deals directly, what did you not want to take on in-house?

The hesitation was really about whether it made sense to build all of that ourselves. We know our games, our players, and how to create the right experience for them. Building relationships with global brands and agencies is a very different capability, and not one we necessarily wanted to build from scratch.

That’s why the right partners mattered so much. A partner like DT already had those relationships and direct access to brands, and could help us bring campaigns into our games faster and at scale. It lets us focus on what we do best, creating the right experience for our players, while relying on partners for the expertise and relationships they already have on the brand side.

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With UA costs rising industry-wide, sustaining LTV is top of mind. Do brand integrations support long-term player value in your mature games, or do they cost you retention?

This is one of the main reasons we keep investing in brand advertising. LTV is top of mind for us. It isn’t just about maximizing short-term monetization – it's about keeping players engaged for a very long time. That matters especially in mature games, where players have been with us for years, and protecting that relationship is incredibly valuable.

The advertising experience plays a role in that. Brand campaigns can be much more user-friendly than some performance campaigns. So brand integrations are also about protecting the long-term value of our players. If we can bring in incremental revenue while supporting engagement and retention, that’s a very interesting combination.

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That brings us to the takeover we ran in June. When the idea first came up, what was your reaction? Did you have hesitations about running a full takeover?

If you’ve chased brands the way we have over the past few years, one skill you have to develop is managing expectations, and not just everyone else’s but your own. I’ve had my heart broken by missed opportunities more than a few times. So now, when a takeover proposal comes up, I quietly start working on it: understand what’s needed, figure out which game is the right fit, get the data, talk it through with the DT team, and try not to get my hopes up.

This started as just one more of those opportunities. But as discussions progressed, it became clear this time was different. Everything aligned: the right brand, the right timing, the right game, and the right team. That last part is really important. An opportunity like this can be time-consuming and, honestly, a little uncomfortable for a product team. There’s no playbook, because every brand, game, and integration is different. We were lucky the Head Ball 2 team was willing to take on the challenge and explore how to make it work. They embraced something new, and that was a big part of turning the opportunity DT brought us into something real.

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Looking back, what surprised you? What worked, and what were the unexpected asks from the brand side?

One of the most positive things was that both sides, the game and the brand, really respected each other’s identity. The brand cared a lot about how its image and characters were represented, and whether everything felt authentic to what people were used to seeing from it. That meant a lot of back-and-forth to get the details right, and I mean a lot. But our team was collaborative throughout. We understood why those details mattered and made every change we could to make sure the brand was happy with the final result.

“One of the most positive things was that both sides, the game and the brand, really respected each other’s identity.“
- Inês Rendas, Partnership Manager, Miniclip

And the brand really respected what Head Ball 2 is and how it works. In the past we’ve had brands who wanted us to create environments or mechanics that simply didn’t make sense for a particular game. This wasn’t like that. The brand felt seamless within the Head Ball 2 environment, rather than something placed on top of it. When someone loves a game and plays every day, they want new things that keep it fresh, but those things can’t be so disruptive that it stops feeling like their favorite game.

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The results

On peak days, more than 125,000 matches were played by players wearing or using the custom-branded items. The campaign also delivered roughly 75% more impressions than originally estimated, with approximately 30% of the audience actively engaged with branded elements.

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For developers thinking ahead, what's your advice on setting up their stack and partnerships to scale brand demand globally?

Three things:

1. Choose the right partners. Stay focused on making great games. Relationships with global brands are a capability in their own right and are rarely something a studio wants to build from scratch. The right partner already manages those relationships and can translate what your game offers into what a brand is optimizing for, so brand demand competes on its own merits instead of sitting at the bottom of your stack. 
2. Vary how you connect with brands. Programmatic, direct, custom activations, and everything in between all have a place. The more ways you can activate brand demand, the more incremental budget you capture, and the less any single channel has to carry. It usually makes for a better player experience too.
3. Don’t give up on brand takeover RFPs. Managing expectations is hard, but when the right campaign aligns, it delivers for your players and your bottom line.

Most publishers meet brand demand at the RFP, which is already too late. The relationships have to be in place before the brief shows up. 

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Thinking about bringing brands into your game? Get in touch.