#programmatic buying

[giancarlo-antona]

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[adopsmind]

Marketing Campaigns are more than just product promotion; they are about knowing what works. As Adops Consultants, we make tracking your success and measuring ROI easy so that you can take the guesswork out of your marketing campaigns.

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[consulttv]

Strategic Insights: Maximizing Campaign Impact With Connected TV Ads

In the ever-evolving realm of digital advertising, the emergence of Connected TV (CTV) has paved the way for advertisers to reach audiences in new and impactful ways. As we delve into the world of addressable TV advertising and programmatic TV buying, understanding the nuances of Connected TV ad formats becomes pivotal for executing effective campaigns.

Addressable TV advertising is a game-changer in the marketing sphere, allowing advertisers to deliver personalized content to specific households or even individuals. This hyper-targeted approach minimizes wastage and enhances engagement. With Connected TV, the addressable capabilities are amplified, enabling advertisers to tailor their messages to the preferences and behaviors of viewers. This not only maximizes the impact of the campaign but also ensures a more efficient allocation of resources.

In the realm of programmatic TV buying, the traditional process of manual ad placements is replaced by automated, data-driven decisions. This is where the concept of programmatic TV comes into play, leveraging algorithms to analyze viewer data and optimize ad placements in real-time. This dynamic approach not only enhances efficiency but also allows advertisers to adapt their strategies swiftly in response to changing market dynamics.

Now, let's explore the diverse landscape of Connected TV ad formats. The traditional 30-second spot is no longer the sole player. Interactive overlays, branded content integrations, and shoppable ads are just a few examples of the innovative formats gaining traction in the CTV space. Interactive overlays, for instance, encourage viewer engagement by incorporating clickable elements directly into the content. This not only captures attention but also provides a seamless transition from content consumption to action.

Branded content integrations take a more subtle approach, seamlessly incorporating the brand into the storyline or context of the program. This format resonates well with viewers, as it doesn't disrupt the viewing experience but rather enhances it. Shoppable ads, on the other hand, capitalize on the growing trend of e-commerce, allowing viewers to make purchases directly from the ad.

Consult.tv, a platform at the forefront of these developments, is a valuable resource for advertisers seeking to stay ahead of the curve. The platform offers insights, case studies, and practical guidance on leveraging the full potential of Connected TV advertising. By exploring their content, advertisers can gain a deeper understanding of emerging trends, best practices, and the ever-expanding array of ad formats.

In conclusion, the world of Connected TV advertising is dynamic, presenting both challenges and opportunities for advertisers. By harnessing the power of addressable TV advertising, embracing programmatic TV buying, and experimenting with diverse Connected TV ad formats, advertisers can create campaigns that resonate with their target audiences in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

[unboundb2b]

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[michigan-seo-onsite-processes]

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[jr2882070]

Launch Media is a white-label programmatic media buying agency that works closely with clients to provide the best results. They take the guesswork out of media buying to leverage artificial intelligence. They provide best Programmatic Ad Buying. For more information visit wearelaunchmedia.com.

https://wearelaunchmedia.com/solutions/programmatic-display-advertising/

[therandomidiotat3am]

could i maybe get some dating one of the gallagher brothers or john lennon headcanons? adding a lil smut is ok with me btw 🤭🤭

Maybe I'll do some John Lennon headcanon's after I finish the Albarn smut from another one of my followers 🤔

Anyways!

What dating Liam would include..

there's a little bit of smut in here;⁠-)

He will literally drag you along to every single Oasis concert's and tour's.

If you refuse to accompany him on either of those,he will stick himself unto you and sulk like a toddler who's just been denied candy.

"Liam I would love to go to every single one of your show's,but I have a job—If I keep on missing work the company will fire me."

"I'll buy the fookin' company then!"

If he's drunk enough onstage and you're behind him shying ever so slightly away into the backstage, expect to get pulled out and flaunted to at his fan's as he continues to go on a drunken ramble about how he had won the lottery with you being his. To the dismay of the management and Noel of course .

Jealousy and insecurity

He is a jealous man

Like jealousy doesn't even fully describe it.

Of course he trust's you and know's that you'd never actually act unfaithful —still sometimes just like any other human in love,his jealousy and insecurities begin to rise up whenever he sees you with someone else. Be it man or woman.

Will hover between you and whoever that he suspects has their eye's on you,if he feel's extremely threatened he would pull your waist and subtly hint that he didn't like where this was going.

In rare occasions, well not all that rare he would just call the person his favourite catch phrase.

"You fucking wanker can't you see that they're not interested!"

Might need your reasurence afterwards.

Actually he desperately needs it because despite the hilarity of the situation he still has a tear of worry in his heart.

Usually can be cured by messy smooches and maybe a little action.. ;)

Just because he is insecure it doesn't mean that You could ever in a million year's be insecure about anything at all.

If you came to him and expressed that you felt insecure about yourself or about your guys relationship —he will waste no time in cupping your cheek's and giving a quick peck on them before suffocating you in a this-is-how-much-I-love-you hug.

"I love you more than John Lennon, bloody hell you mean I could ever find someone better?"

Family

Prepare to hear him complain about his "estranged"brother Noel Gallagher and how he was actually Satan in disguise.

At this point you've started programmatically nodding off every time you hear the word Noel, because you know that what followed up next would be the most merciless insult in all of mankind.

Also prepare to hear their joyful hellish banter everyday in the studio as they once again fight over who was the rightful owner of Oasis.

SLIGHT SMUT

Despite the macho tough guy persona Liam actually like's it when you give him hickey's,consider's it one of the biggest turn on's. Won't miss the chance to gross out Noel by constantly showing them off because

A)He gets to annoy Noel

B)He actually feel's proud of having your mark's on him.

He adores it when you hastily unbuckle his belt to give his cock a slight rub whenever a makeout session ensues.

He likes shower sex because the very image of you soaking wet and standing vulnerably naked right Infront of him —to make it comprehensive and short, smoking hot.

[mariacallous]

In 2019, other than the government of Vladimir Putin, Warren Buffett was the biggest funder of Sputnik News, the Russian disinformation website controlled by the Kremlin. It wasn’t that the legendary champion of American capitalism had an alter ego who woke up every morning wondering how he could help finance Vladimir Putin’s global propaganda network. It was because Geico, the giant American insurance company and subsidiary of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, was the leading advertiser on the American version of Sputnik News’ global website network.

Nor was it because a marketing executive at Geico had decided that advertising on the Russian disinformation outlet was a good idea. That would have been especially unlikely, not only because of the Buffett connection, but also because Geico stands for Government Employees Insurance Company and has its roots dating to the 1930s, providing insurance to civilians and members of the military who worked for the American government, not its Russian adversary.

In fact, no one at Geico or its advertising agency had any idea its ads would appear on Sputnik, let alone what anti-American content would be displayed alongside the ads. How could they? Which person or army of people at Geico or its agency could have read 44,000 websites?

Geico’s ads had been placed through a programmatic advertising system that was invented in the late 1990s as the internet developed. It exploded beginning in the mid 2000s and is now the overwhelmingly dominant advertising medium. Programmatic algorithms, not people, decide where to place most of the ads we now see on websites, social media platforms, mobile devices, streaming television, and increasingly hear on podcasts. The numbers involved are mind-boggling. If Geico’s advertising campaign were typical of programmatic campaigns for broad-based consumer products and services, each of its ads would have been placed on an average of 44,000 websites, according to a study done for the leading trade association of big-brand advertisers.

Geico is hardly the only rock-solid American brand to be funding the Russians. During the same period that the insurance company’s ads appeared on Sputnik News, 196 other programmatic advertisers bought ads on the website, including Best Buy, E-Trade, and Progressive insurance. Sputnik News’ sister propaganda outlet, RT.com (it was once called Russia Today until someone in Moscow decided to camouflage its parentage), raked in ad revenue from Walmart, Amazon, PayPal, and Kroger, among others.

Every workday, approximately 2,500 people sit at desktops or laptops using these programmatic advertising algorithms to spend tens of millions of dollars an hour. They work at advertising agencies scattered around the world, or, in the case of some major companies, at their in-house advertising shops. Their titles might be “programmatic specialist,” “programmatic associate,” or “campaign manager.” What they have in common is that they are usually in their first jobs out of college. Although many work from home post-Covid, if they are in the office, they sit at carrels in large open spaces that resemble the trading floor of a stock brokerage.

[theculturedmarxist]

There have been many scandals associated with covid in the last nearly 4 years.

I want to tell you about another one that has got zero media coverage.

The top-line is this: the UK government gave more than 2.3 million vulnerable and older people a covid vaccine that isn’t matched to the currently dominant covid strains. And they did it to save money.

The dominant covid strains right now are known as the XBBs. They have been dominant since late summer in most places, when they took over from the BA strains of omicron.

But rather than give people the new more effective XBB vaccine, the British government decided to use up their stockpile of the older BA vaccines first.

The worst thing is, those who got the outdated vaccine were those first in line for vaccines, such as older people and people with health conditions.

But they won’t know this.

So 2.3 million vulnerable people in the UK are walking around thinking they are well-protected this winter against covid when they’re not.

The British government didn’t hide why it did this. On the official government webpage it spells it out. In bold are the clues hiding in plain sight.

“The choice of vaccine products for autumn 2023 has been determined based on available data on vaccine safety, effectiveness and immunogenicity, logistical factors, programmatic deliverability and a bespoke cost effective assessment. Other vaccines which may offer similar protection, but which would incur additional costs, are expected to be less cost effective within the bespoke cost-effectiveness assessment compared to pre-procured Omicron-variant mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.”

What they are saying, under the cover of the gross language of ‘bespoke cost effectiveness assessment,’ is that they’d already bought the older vaccines and it was cheaper to use them than buy extra new ones.

They used people’s bodies as asset dumps for old medical stock.

In the UK the booster roll-out began on September 11th. We know that in Scotland they switched over to XBB on September 25th and in England and Wales they switched to the new ones on October 2nd, as confirmed that day by Meaghan Kall, an epidemiologist at the UK’s health security agency responsible for covid.

But by September 29th the British government reported 2.35 million people had been covid boosted. So we know this was largely with the old vaccine (save 4 days in Scotland). In response to my thread on Twitter, many reported receiving the old vaccine. Even now, people are saying they’re still only being offered the old vaccine.

Boosting people with a vaccine not matched to the dominant strains will certainly lead to worse outcomes as an average than if these people had received the updated vaccine. People will die for this penny pinching.

But then the British government has for some time now been relaxed about killing people for austerity.

The Brits are also tightly restricting access to covid vaccines, in contrast to almost every other country. And in a final twist, the Brits are now stockpiling the new XBB vaccines and are almost certainly going to take the same approach to deploying an outdated vaccine next time round.

When I tweeted about this, the Guardian journalist George Monbiot responded and we subsequently exchanged emails. Monbiot did then write a very good column about the ongoing burden of covid in the UK and the various public health failures.

But the article omitted any mention of the millions who were given the older vaccine.

I can’t criticise Monbiot. I wouldn’t be surprised if he included this and it was cut by his editors. And his article stands head and shoulders above almost any other reporting of covid in the mass media, a mass media that has played a key part in normalising the transmission of a virus that has become the leading cause of infectious disease death in the world today.

These lies and misinformation about covid in the mass media continue. Last week was no exception.

The BBC’s health editor Nick Triggle wrote a truly noxious covid story full of half-truths, lies by omission and propaganda. He said covid was less deadly than the flu, that it is becoming a seasonal ‘bug’, that people who were concerned about rising hospitalisations were just anxious. (Nick Triggle’s sister-in-law is a Tory member of parliament, which might explain some things).

In the US, the New York Times interviewed the epidemiologist and long-time covid downplayer Michael Mina who said rates of long covid are drastically falling - without citing a shred of evidence - and said repeated exposure to covid for most people will not be harmful and will build immunity. In the comments below the piece, one person said the “excellent story begs the question as to whether healthy people should take any precautions against covid.” Job done.

Then there was the ‘long cold’ research paper which was amplified across global media.

If you missed it, the thrust was that long colds might be as common as long covid. So far, so fine.

But the findings were stripped of critical context in relation to covid.

It failed to acknowledge that even if long colds do exist, and almost certainly they do, Sars-Cov-2 is a different beast, behaving in a completely different way to other common cold-causing coronaviruses.

And rather than the conclusion here being ‘ok, so if long colds are this common, long covid might be very common too and maybe we should do something about it,’ the stories led us towards the conclusion that long covid itself is nothing to worry about because post-viral illness is nothing new.

All of this would have been bad enough without mentioning the methodology.

The study was conducted in 2020-2021 and relied on people self reporting a respiratory illness that they said wasn’t covid. We know for a fact that far fewer people got a respiratory illness that wasn’t covid in these years, so I expect a good number of these ‘not covids’ leading to ‘long colds’ were, in fact, covids leading to long covid. But again, the media stories failed to provide any of this context. Nick Triggle was one of those who wrote a story.

Triggled twice in two weeks.

Over and over, it seems that those who are concerned about covid come armed with data, and those who aren’t come armed with gut feeling in order to keep business-as-usual ticking over.

It’s 2019 again! Stop worrying!

Normalisation is the most powerful sociological force in the world today. Through a captured media, the ruling class can make us absorb a pandemic, accept climate collapse and shrug at apartheid. Change is unnecessary because nothing is wrong. It is just the natural order, flowing.

We also found out this week that just 2% of Americans have stepped up for the new covid jab, a rate of uptake that can be traced back to the early over-hyping of vaccines and the manufacturing of a narrative that says covid is mild and we’ve all achieved immunity now anyway.

I didn’t know where we’d be nearly four years on from the start of the pandemic, but I didn’t think we’d be here. New waves, millions being infected, thousands dying every week. And a media and public knowledge blackout of Novavax, the most effective vaccine. A vaccine we’ve known is the most effective for over two years.

It is tiring to keep up, to keep bearing witness to these fuck-ups, to this cruelty.

But we have to.

Because to believe in change means documenting the incompetence, the failure, the lies and the indifference that eventually compels that change to come.

[adopsmind]

Most publishers do not have sufficient time on their hands to tackle their ad ops. They have a fast-paced schedule and put in their best efforts to tend to multiple operations such as site management, content establishment, and other vital operations. Remote Ad operations services will allow you to focus on core activities. The significant duty of professional advertising traffickers is the optimization of campaigns for the promotion of user experience and improvement of click-through rates. These professionals have a supporting network as they are tackling publishers from multiple niches.

[exeggcute]

okay I am Still thinking about mr. tumblr CEO's post and my own speulation about ad-based revenue in the context of adult content, and I'm only just now realizing that matt didn't talk about advertising at all when discussing tumblr's potential revenue streams (except to mention that ad-free browsing subscriptions are one of the main ways automattic makes money off of tumblr atm), which is very interesting and more or less adheres to some of the patterns I've noticed in the new monetization features that tumblr's rolled out since the automattic takeover.

imo, this is also a good sign for the long-term longevity of this website, considering that we know that digital advertising is a mess, behavioral ads really don't work, and the programmatic ads ecosystem itself may or may not be a bubble. automattic, being a company that primarily makes money off of woocommerce and wordpress subscriptions, is certainly well aware of this; they also stand in contrast to tumblr's previous owner, yahoo/verizon media (although verizon itself got rolled back into the yahoo branding again in recent years… confusing) is itself a demand-side platform first and foremost. so verizon media would have been naturally more inclined to focus on an ad-based revenue model, both because they have faith in advertising in general but also (potentially) because verizon as a DSP stands to gain the most by facilitating programmatic ad purchases.

the real winners in the digital advertising ecosystem are the platforms that buy and sell ads on behalf of publishers (i.e., the people who own ad space to be sold); my understanding is that SSPs/DSPs/ad exchanges in general take a pretty big slice of the pie and the publishers themselves only make a small amount of money comparatively. this is also one reason that advertising fraud and ineffective ads have gone unchecked for so long—ad exchanges make more money the more ads are bought and sold, so they have no incentive to cut down on bad traffic and unnecessary ad spend. (there are other reasons too, among them that it's just hard as fuck to sift through traffic data at scale.) but as brands are wising up to the pitfalls of the digital ads ecosystem, they're less likely to buy ads or are more likely to implement cheaper, more tightly-controlled campaigns; tumblr, being a publisher, is therefore selling less ad space and generating less revenue.

(this is where we start to get a little out of my knowledge range, because I still find the programmatic model confusing as shit, but my guess (and take this with a grain of salt) is that a verizon/yahoo-owned tumblr, being in cahoots with its sister DSP, would potentially have been making more money from the ad space it was brokering through the DSP than from the publisher revenue itself, but part of me is like "wait, wouldn't that make more sense if verizon/yahoo was an SSP??" so honestly I don't know. the possible-maybe-unclear takeaway here is that pre-automattic tumblr might have been making their ad money by being both the shopkeeper and the manufacturer, so to speak, which possibly-maybe implies that they would have been incentivized to sell by volume rather than offering particularly high-quality inventory, although that might not even matter here.)

anyway. so if we look at New Tumblr's (i.e., automattic's) answer to the programmatic nightmare, we see two interesting things. one is the ad-free upgrade, which we can take to mean that tumblr is probably making significantly less than $40 per year per user in terms of ad inventory; they're smart to still show ads in general, since that (1) at least generates some revenue for non-paid users and (2) provides an incentive to upgrade to a paid plan. the other thing is tumblr blaze, which is essentially a direct-to-buyer ad model that removes all the middlemen involved in programmatic ads. reddit recently moved away from programmatic ads entirely with great results. so instead of generating revenue through a relationship that looks like this:

you can generate revenue through a relationship that looks like this:

(with stripe in the middle taking a cut as their payment processor, but I'm sure it's not much.)

tumblr blaze isn't quite on reddit's level (at least not yet), and my hunch is that it'll remain more of a thing for actual tumblr users to "market" non-traditional advertising posts (e.g., pictures of your cat), but this signals a willingness to look beyond the programmatic ecosystem in advertising-related matters.

tumblr has also dabbled in non-advertising monetization models with things like post plus and whatever nascent ecommerce-adjacent thing is going on with artistalley (I guess the latter is sort of advertising-y but less blatantly so). artistalley in particular is interesting to me and I'm curious to see if this signals any kind of plan to create a tumblr/woocommerce integration so people can sell stuff directly from their blogs but that is a whole other animal.

now, with that said, shying away from programmatic-based revenue models (or ad-based models entirely) doesn't resolve the whole "we still can't host porn" problem; stripe includes adult content on its list of restricted businesses; their FAQ notes that "due to various reasons including requirements that apply to Stripe as a payment processor, requirements from our financial partners, and the potential risk exposure to Stripe, we're currently not able to work with businesses that sell or offer adult content or services."

and yeah, you could argue that reddit sells ad space despite hosting lots of adult content, but they're operating on a wholly different scale with far more leverage (remember, their parent company is conde fucking nast) and we don't know how exactly money is changing hands here. even if reddit were using a major payment processor and that payment processor is just choosing to look the other way, unequal enforcement of the rules isn't proof that everyone else will be able to evade enforcement, either in the short or long term. don't forget that we're talking about tumblr here, a website that yahoo sold for less than 0.3% of what they paid to acquire it. reddit- or twitter-level leverage is basically nonexistent.

[unboundb2b]

Follow the newest trends in programmatic advertising for 2023 to stay ahead!

Learn about the new strategies and trends that will influence programmatic advertising in 2023. Take the lead over the competition with insightful knowledge and knowledgeable predictions.

Share these thoughts with your industry peers to step up your marketing game!

[uptodigitalmarketingskill]

DIGITAL MARKETING

Digital Marketing Course Content

Fundamentals of Digital marketing & Its Significance, Traditional marketing Vs Digital Marketing, Evolution of Digital Marketing, Digital Marketing Landscape, Key Drivers, Digital Consumer & Communities, Gen Y & Netizen’s expectation & influence wrt Digital Marketing.  The Digital users in India, Digital marketing Strategy- Consumer Decision journey,

POEM Framework, Segmenting & Customizing messages, Digital advertising Market in India, Skills in Digital Marketing, Digital marketing Plan.  Terminology used in Digital Marketing, PPC and online marketing through social media, Social Media Marketing, SEO techniques, Keyword advertising, Google web-master and analytics overview, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Mobile marketing

Display adverting, Buying Models, different type of ad tools, Display advertising terminology, types of display ads, different ad formats, Ad placement techniques, Important ad terminology, Programmatic Digital Advertising.

Social Media Marketing

Fundamentals of Social Media Marketing& its significance, Necessity of Social media Marketing, Building a Successful strategy: Goal Setting, Implementation.  Facebook Marketing: Facebook for Business, Facebook Insight, Different types of Ad formats, Setting up Facebook Advertising Account, Facebook audience & types, Designing Facebook Advertising campaigns, Facebook Avatar, Apps, Live, Hashtags  LinkedIn Marketing: Importance of LinkedIn presence, LinkedIn Strategy, Content Strategy, LinkedIn analysis, Targeting, Ad Campaign  Twitter Marketing:- Basics, Building a content strategy, Twitter usage, Twitter Ads, Twitter ad campaigns, Twitter Analytics, Twitter Tools and tips for mangers. Instagram & Snapchat basics.

Search Engine Optimization

Introduction to SEO, How Search engine works, SEO Phases, History Of SEO, How SEO Works, What is Googlebot (Google Crawler), Types Of SEO technique, Keywords, Keyword Planner tools  On page Optimization, Technical Elements, HTML tags, Schema.org, RSS Feeds, Microsites, Yoast SEO Plug-in  Off page Optimization- About Off page optimization, Authority & hubs, Backlink, Blog Posts, Press Release, Forums, Unnatural links.  Social media Reach- Video Creation & Submission, Maintenance- SEO tactics, Google search Engine, Other Suggested tools

Advertising Tools & Its Optimization

Advertising & its importance, Digital Advertising, Different Digital Advertisement, Performance of Digital Advertising:- Process & players, Display Advertising Media, Digital metrics  Buying Models- CPC, CPM, CPL, CPA, fixed Cost/Sponsorship, Targeting:- Contextual targeting, remarking, Demographics , Geographic & Language Targeting.  Display adverting, different type of ad tools, Display advertising terminology, types of display ads, different ad formats, Ad placement techniques, Important ad terminology, ROI measurement techniques, AdWords & Adsense.  YouTube Advertising:- YouTube Channels, YouTube Ads, Type of Videos, Buying Models, Targeting & optimization, Designing & monitoring Video Campaigns, Display campaigns

Website Hosting Using Word Press

Website Planning & Development- Website, Types of Websites, Phases of website development, Keywords: Selection process  Domain & Web Hosting:- Domain, Types of Domain, Where to Buy Domain, Webhosting, How to buy Webhosting  Building Website using Word press-What is Word press, CMS, Post and Page  Word press Plug-ins- Different Plug-ins, social media Plug-ins, page builder plug-ins: the elementor, how to insert a section, how to insert logo, Google Micro sites

[pixelquiet]

Pixel Plays 01: Heisei Pistol Show

I’ve decided that I wanna write blog posts about games I’ve played recently, how they make me feel, and what lessons I will be taking from them moving forward as a developer.  This entire thing is all because playing this game gave me a ton of brain worms and very few people are talking about it online.  Lets get to it!!!!

I first heard about Heisei Pistol Show (HSP from now on) by the developer Parun in a lovely video by hazel about one of his other games Re:Kinder.  She mentioned it briefly, about how it stars a boy in a lolita dress (which immediately intrigued my gender sense), and how a subbed playthrough could be found on youtube.  I tried watching that playthrough, but honestly, the translation was incredibly rough, not to mention hard to follow with how busy the art style is and how fast paced the recording was.  I decided to wait on it if a fan translation ever came out, and sure enough, just a year later, we got one!  I was super excited that I would finally get the chance to try it out

HSP is primarily exploration based, with Heart, the aforementioned boy in a dress, exploring a strange yume nikki-esque dreamscape with his best and only friend, a talking pistol, by his side.  His goal is to find and kill the top three assassins who are standing in his way from getting revenge on his ex-boyfriend.  The game loop revolves around exploring to find cash, buying a new gun, and using its special properties to defeat the top three in a sort of turn based puzzle fight.  There are no enemies beyond the bosses, so defeating them is more about using the unique properties of the guns to take them down before they can do the same to you.  I ended up just running away from all of them upon first encounter to instead find all the money in the game, using it to buy every pistol, and then using the information memos to figure out which ones to equip.  The boss fights are really clever, seeming impossible at first glace, but not too hard in the end.  The game also offers an easy mode that lets you kill every boss in one normal attack, but where’s the fun in that?!

The part of the game that really gripped me is the art and story.  The artwork feels very homemade, but also exudes effort.  Lots of bright, flashing colors and intricate programmatic animations precede every first encounter with a boss in a little musical number.  The character sprites are very charming in that oekaki sensibility as well.  The characters talk to each other like good friends with a lot of history together, which makes the rest of the story that much more tragic as it unfolds.

I’d like to delve into some spoilers as I describe the story here, so if you are interested in playing this game, please please skip this paragraph.  Heart’s story was really familiar and difficult to me, as a trans woman.  We are shown scenes of his (I will be using he for consistency, but this is debatable in my opinion) childhood in which he wishes to become a princess, and sings along to a princess-themed idol’s song, a pastiche of twinkle twinkle little star.  At first, Heart claims the singing made his father happy, but later on we are shown him being abused by his father, seemingly due to that femininity and it’s resemblance to that of Heart’s cheating mother.  As the story goes on, we can see that this pain led to an inability to form healthy relationships, as Heart attached himself to his clients as a sex worker, to the despair of the Top Three, who are seemingly representations of the other sex workers, and also ambiguously trans in the way Heart is.  Heart’s story is tragic, a trans sex worker, abused and clinging to love, falling to violence and eventually being killed by police.  Despite all of this, Heart never loses his cheery attitude and hope that he can one day find happiness, although this takes a dark turn when he believes revenge on his lover is what will bring that happiness.

I really found the story and it’s themes of clinging to hope and happiness in the face of unending misfortune, as well as its thematic interplay of sex and violence challenging and fascinating, and I think it explores the topics it does with a level of nuance greater than many works made today, despite having been developed in 2008 Japan.  I also think it succeeds in a lot of the ways recent indie darling Omori, fumbles, especially in regards to story and managing to make a dream world have consequences and meaning within the narrative.

I think some of the lessons I’ll be taking from this are in regards to the art and story.  First, I think I will try to allow myself some ambiguity in the stories of my games, especially towards the beginning.  For the majority of the game, I had very little clue what was actually going on, and things became more clear over time in a very satisfying “ah-ha!” moment.  I’d love to replicate something like that in my games in the future.  Secondly, and this is a lesson I’ve learned before, a game having “technically” bad art doesn’t make the art bad.  Parun’s artstyle isn’t the most impressive, but it has a lot of charm and beauty, and is completely unashamed of itself.  The game allows itself to be loud, colorful, and messy, and I think there’s no other way this game could have been made.

All in all, please give this game a shot!  It’s free and pretty short, less than an afternoon’s time (also I need more people to make fanart of Heart he’s so cute).

https://patchy-illusion-team.itch.io/heisei-pistol-show