Cutting through the noise: Marathon
Mission
Execution
Results
The hype for Marathon has been real since it was announced in 2023. So when Bungie prepared to launch this year, PlayStation and WPP sought out a media partner capable of delivering cultural relevance, premium visibility, and meaningful engagement among highly competitive first-person shooter (FPS) audiences. You got it, they came to us.
The primary objective of this campaign was to generate widespread awareness and anticipation for the title among high-intent FPS, extraction shooter, and multiplayer gaming communities. The campaign aimed to position Marathon as a standout during one of the most competitive launch windows in gaming, maximize player attention, drive deep engagement, and validate the effectiveness of highly curated gaming audiences.
To bring Marathon's futuristic extraction-shooter world to life and cut through the launch window noise, we deployed a multi-channel campaign across premium gaming destinations during critical Server Slam and launch periods.
The strategy centered on immersing players in "The Runner Experience" by activating a full-funnel, multi-format approach across trusted environments that gamers visit every day:
- Universe Takeovers: Deployed to dominate key launch moments with maximum visual impact.
- High Impact Packages & Rich Media: Combined rich media storytelling and conversational ad formats to deepen player understanding of the game's lore and mechanics.
- Video Integrations: Implemented to maximize attention and completion rates across premium gaming inventory.
- Opera GX Activations: Leveraged to connect natively with a highly enthusiastic, hard-to-reach PC gaming audience.
- Advanced Audience Targeting: Utilized sophisticated contextual and Data Management Platform (DMP) layers to specifically reach FPS, extraction shooter, multiplayer, and competitor IP-aligned players.
This multi-format framework perfectly balanced massive scale with targeted precision, placing Marathon directly in front of the right players at the right time.
The strategic blend of high-impact formats and precision audience layers delivered exceptional performance across the portfolio:
- Massive Scale: The campaign generated nearly 54 million impressions, maintaining consistent visibility across multiple player touchpoints during the critical launch windows.
- Precision Performance: The data-led strategy proved highly effective, with DMP-targeted audiences delivering roughly 2x higher click-through rates (CTR) compared to baseline benchmarks.
By pairing high-impact storytelling with granular behavioral targeting, the campaign successfully validated the power of curated gaming audiences to drive meaningful engagement under intense market competition.
“Marathon was the perfect example of what happens when premium creative, contextual gaming environments, and audience intelligence work together. By surrounding highly engaged FPS and multiplayer players with immersive experiences across our gaming collective, we were able to deliver both the scale PlayStation needed and the attention that modern game launches demand. The brand lift results reinforced what we've long believed: gamers respond best when campaigns feel native to the environments they already trust.” - Julian Castillo, Publisher Collective
If you’re looking to cut through the noise this summer, get in touch with our team here, we’re ready to support you.
