Havas Play, Havas’ culture-first agency network specialising in sport, entertainment, gaming and fandom, has partnered with gaming advertising platform iion to give brands across ANZ and APAC a faster way to create and deploy interactive, playable advertising across gaming, digital, and social environments.
The partnership will see iion become Havas Play’s exclusive technology partner and platform for playable and mini-game builds, integrating its Playable Creator Studio into Havas Play’s offering across the region. The offering, Havas Play:able, will combine the agency’s culture and entertainment with iion’s technology to create branded experiences that encourage audiences to actively participate, rather than passively view an ad.
The launch reflects Havas’ Deliberately Different approach, helping brands engage audiences through immersive experiences that blur the lines between content, entertainment and commerce
Through iion’s Playable Creator Studio, Havas Play will be able to generate bespoke, pitch-ready interactive concepts and previews before moving into production and deployment. The platform will be available across the Havas network and directly to brand clients. Several Havas Play clients are already exploring the capability to develop a series of casual gaming experiences across retail, FMCG and beauty categories.
“The era of passive media is over – every ad should be an invitation to play, interact, and engage, because that’s how genuine brand love is created. Havas Play fundamentally understands culture and entertainment, and together we aim to take the power of ‘play’ far beyond gaming into the broader digital and social ecosystem,” said Yun Yip, chief commercial officer at iion.
“By fusing their cultural pulse with our technology, we are making every impression an active, lean-in moment that keeps brands top-of-mind while delivering measurable performance across the player’s experience.”
Havas Play:able is designed to address some of the traditional barriers to playable advertising, which can require significant upfront production costs and weeks of development before brands can see a working concept.
The platform uses agentic technology and AI automation alongside human creative strategy to develop interactive previews, allowing brands to explore playable concepts without the upfront production requirements traditionally associated with the format. Once developed, the experiences can be deployed across iion’s gaming ecosystem as well as the premium open web and social channels, with analytics available to measure audience interaction and performance.
“Gaming has become one of the most powerful ways for brands to earn attention, and the scale and frequency of casual gaming has made play a mainstream behaviour, not a niche activity. Micro-games give brands an opportunity to move from advertising around gaming to creating experiences that audiences actively participate in, with simple, culturally relevant experiences that people can pick up and play anywhere,” said Nick Smith, managing partner of Havas Play ANZ.
“Historically, bringing that kind of experience into a brand’s everyday content and media plans has been difficult, expensive and slow. Havas Play:able changes that. By combining our understanding of culture with iion’s technology, we can turn an idea into a playable branded experience in days, not weeks, giving brands a new way to make their audiences active participants rather than passive viewers.”
