Mobile ad platform Tap Me has launched new advertising formats specially designed for mobile in-game advertising.

The new formats aim to pass on brand messages to consumers in a far less intrusive way than current in-game ads.

According to Tap Me, there are signficant problems with current approaches to in-game advertising:

Tap Me brings a game developer’s viewpoint to the world of advertising.

“One of Tap Me’s unique strengths is that we are a team of mobile game developers, which gives us an innate understanding of game design and development fundamentals. We set about to create a first-of-a-kind ad platform that takes advantage of the natural attributes of games, with the goal of maximizing the contextual opportunities for advertisers to participate in this exploding medium,” noted Joshua Hernandez, co-founder and CEO of Tap Me.

The new ad formats offered by Tap Me include:

• The ability to sponsor a “power up”, which allows a character to increase a given characteristic. Once the consumer chooses this option a brand message is displayed on that page
• The ability to sponsor leader boards
• Incentives for actions and interactions with other gamers

Tap Me reports that engagement rates are much higher than the 1% response rate typically resulting from traditional banner ads. Results from testing have shown an average of 20% of players choosing sponsored power-ups and as high as 50% for certain games.

“Tap Me’s platform is the first, targeted and relevant approach to mobile media I’ve seen. It considers the developer, user and brand advertiser in a way never done before. In a nutshell, it’s nothing short of utter genius,” noted Mills™ of ustwo, a digital design and app development studio.