How AI agents increased engagement by 42% at Tokyo Game Show Digital World

Overview

Dentsu, an advertising agency that’s a world leader in marketing and media solutions, has long been at the forefront of new advertising and event technologies. In 2021, Dentsu launched ‘xambr,’ a platform where large-scale events like the Tokyo Game Show can have a virtual presence in collaboration with the creative studio ambr Inc. This virtual venue allows companies attending the convention to engage with in-person and virtual attendees more effectively via VR devices, PCs, and smartphones. More than just a virtual trade show platform, xambr is an immersive world where companies can build gamified interactions to better engage their audience. 

This time, Dentsu wanted to add more interactivity to the Tokyo Game Show virtual experience and decided to integrate AI agents and characters via the Inworld AI framework. These AI-driven agents and characters were designed to enhance user interaction and engagement within the platform – but, for Dentsu, they were also a test. 

As more of their customers look for innovative marketing and engagement strategies to better win the competition for consumer attention, Dentsu wanted to evaluate how much of an impact AI characters and agents could have on helping their clients achieve their advertising goals. 

By leveraging Inworld’s frameworks, they were able to launch the experience under a tight six week timeline while also improving engagement by an impressive 42%.

Challenge

While the virtual venue for the Tokyo Game Show has been successful in the past, Dentsu believed that the lack of interactivity was potentially affecting engagement and reducing the time visitors spent in the experience. They also saw that some attendees had trouble navigating the venue and wanted to create AI guides that were able to answer visitors’ questions. 

Their goals in adding AI agents were to:

• Amplify the entertainment value of Dentsu’s Tokyo Game Show Digital World 2024 experience to increase the time spent in the digital world.
• Improve navigation to help attendees find the booths and companies they were looking for 
• Maximize the benefit for companies participating in the virtual event to increase repeat participation and show a greater return on investment from participation. 

With over 117,000 participants attending the Tokyo Games Show Digital World 2024, the challenge was ensuring the experience was engaging, able to scale no matter how many participants were talking to characters at any time, had the lowest possible latency, and resonated with the event’s diverse audience. 

However, they had a six week timeline in which to design and deploy the AI characters, so they turned to Inworld for help since the Inworld AI framework allowed ambr Inc and Dentsu to focus on creating the characters while relying on Inworld’s infrastructure to handle the experience’s performance and load requirements. 

Solution

Dentsu developed three AI-powered characters designed to enhance different aspects of their Tokyo Game Show digital experience,

1. AI Guide: A concierge that provided real-time guidance and answered visitor questions to improve accessibility and event navigation.
2. Talent Avatar: Avatars modeled after celebrities that engaged users in casual conversations, entertaining them through dialogue while introducing merchandise information about the talent to interested users.
3. AI Shopping Guide: An NPC that offered detailed product information for visitors who were interested in buying official merchandise from the digital experience. This was added to test how effective AI characters could be in improving metrics on e-commerce sites. 

By leveraging Inworld AI, Dentsu was able to add characters that were highly responsive and engaging while ensuring that they could deploy the experience in time for the September 2024 show. 

Results

The introduction of AI characters significantly enhanced engagement metrics across the virtual experience:

• Massive reach: 95% of attendees of the virtual event (over 117,000 cumulative visitors) interacted with the AI characters.
• Deeper engagement: 36% of attendees engaged in longer conversations with the characters, averaging 5.2 conversations per user.
• Extended stay: Visitors who interacted with AI characters stayed 42.2% longer (8 minutes more on average) than those who did not.
• Boosted exploration: Users who interacted with AI characters visited 14.38% more vendor booths (approximately one additional booth per user).

For Dentsu, these results validated their belief that AI would be effective in driving greater engagement and attention in virtual experiences. They also were able to report better return on investment metrics to the companies that participated in the virtual exhibition in 2024. This experiment also gave Dentsu metrics to validate the use of AI characters more broadly in advertising experiences. 

Impact

Dentsu’s innovative use of AI at the Tokyo Game Show Digital World 2024 demonstrates how generative AI can boost engagement in virtual spaces. The success of the AI characters in their experience not only highlighted the potential of generative AI in enhancing user experiences but Dentsu was able to get metrics showing that adding AI characters can help drive better results for virtual events, on e-commerce sites, and in interactive or immersive advertising campaigns. 

As Dentsu continues to refine their xambr platform and explore AI applications for their clients, their achievements at the Tokyo Game Show Digital World 2024 offer a blueprint for the future of virtual events and interactive marketing.