More than three-quarters of companies say that they have AI models that never come into use. For 20% of companies, the numbers look even worse, with only 10% of their models making it into production.

That’s according to a new survey commissioned by Run:AI, which found that infrastructure challenges are causing resources to sit idle at companies investing in AI. “[I]f most AI models never make it into production, the promise of AI is not being realized,” Run:AI CEO Omri Geller said in a statement. “Our survey revealed that … data scientists are requesting manual access to GPUs, and the journey to the cloud is ongoing.”

The research conducted by Global Surveys canvassed more than 200 scientists, AI and IT practitioners, and system architects across companies with over 5,000 employees. Just 17% of respondents said that they were able to achieve “high utilization” of their hardware resources, while 22% admitted that their infrastructure sits idle for the most part. That’s despite significant investment — 38% of respondents pegged their company’s annual budget for hardware, software, and cloud fees at more than $1 million. For 15%, their companies spend more than $10 million.

Implementation challenges

Many challenges stand in the way of successfully embedding AI throughout an organization. In an Alation whitepaper, a clear majority of employees (87%) cited data quality shortcomings as the reason their organizations failed to embrace the technology. Another report from MIT Technology Review Insights and Databricks found that AI’s business impact is limited by issues in managing its end-to-end lifecycle.

The end result is abysmal adoption rates. According to a 2019 IDC study, only 25% of the organizations already using AI have developed an “enterprise-wide” strategy. A recent Juniper Networks survey is less optimistic, with only 6% of respondents reporting adoption of AI-powered solutions across their business.

In its research, Run:AI identified data inconsistencies as the biggest deployment blocker. Results state 61% of respondents said that data collection, data cleansing, and governance caused deployment problems. Forty-two percent of experts responding to the survey highlighted challenges with their companies’ AI infrastructure and compute capacity. More than a third say they had to manually request access to resources in order to complete their work.

Data scientists spend the bulk of their time cleaning and organizing data, according to a 2016 survey by CrowdFlower. And respondents to Alation’s latest quarterly State of Data Culture Report said that inherent biases in the data being used in their AI systems produce discriminatory results that create compliance risks for their organizations.

The business value of any AI solution is likely to be limited without clean, centralized data pools or a strategy for actively managing them, Broadridge’s VP of innovation and growth, Neha Singh, noted in a recent piece. “McKinsey estimates that companies may be squandering as much as 70% of their data-cleansing efforts,” she wrote. “The key is prioritizing these efforts based on what’s most critical to implement the most valuable use cases.”

Despite the hurdles, Run:AI reports that companies still commit to AI. These put millions toward infrastructure and likely millions more toward trained staff. Seventy-four percent of survey respondents said that their employers were planning to increase hardware capacity or infrastructure spend in the near future.

“Companies that handle these challenges the most effectively will bring models to market and win the AI race,” Geller continued.

This article is part of a Gaming Insights series paid for by Facebook.

The pandemic triggered a boom for games and gamers, a bright spot in a darker world. In their homes, avid gamers were able to play more, and discover more titles. New gamers came into the fold, playing casual and mobile games and first-person shooters alike; all gamers were able to connect with each other. And overall, the market surged to unprecedented heights.

But as the world returns to something closer to the old normal in many parts of the world, the forecast is changing. The total gaming market is expected to hit $175.8 billion in 2021, which is actually down, for the first time in a few years[1], by 1.1% from $177.8 billion in 2020.

“The global pandemic resulted in more people playing than ever before, but one thing to be aware of as we forecast ahead, we will see a shift in consumer behavior as we get slightly less time for leisure and gaming,” says Brian Colbert, Director of Gaming Sales for the Americas, at Facebook. “That’s going to be an effect we all have to navigate around in the coming months.”

However, the biggest single development this year has been Apple’s new requirements around mobile advertising, and the move toward ad tracking transparency (ATT). Since April, the iOS14.5 changes have been impacting game businesses that advertise their mobile apps, as well as those that monetize using in-app ads. The gaming industry has historically relied for many years on IDFA (Identifier For Advertisers), providing the ability to monitor and track consumer behavior — and companies are finding ways to adapt and evolve to the new advertising landscape.

“Rightfully so, consumers have pushed back and said, we deserve to have our privacy around what we browse and consume protected,” Colbert says. “Advertisers and advertising platforms need to evolve as we all work together to drive business value with personalized ads that are privacy-centric.”

Advertising ecosystem changes are impacting businesses’ ability to reach people with relevant, timely ads. These changes are particularly disruptive for gaming companies that relied on third-party data used to reach people and optimize campaigns. The cost of achieving business outcomes may have increased — but brighter times are ahead.

The Q4 2021 holiday boom

The holiday season is historically a key period for gaming sales, with mobile downloads and in app-revenue from games peaking at this time of year. This holiday sales season will be more important than ever, especially for game companies looking to close the gap. A number of macro trends are pointing to the strong likelihood that this season will be big, Colbert says.

As we head into the end-of-year holiday sales period, consumers are ready to spend. In fact, the NPD Group reports that 29% of consumers[2] plan to spend more on holiday shopping than they did last year. Consumer sentiment is at historic levels, financial optimism is up — and with consumer spending intentions on the upswing, people are clearly ready to treat themselves and others.

The biggest boon of all: the pie is larger, with close to 3 billion people who are gaming in some way, shape, or form. Growth might be slowing down overall, but there was still an impressive increase of 5.4% from 2020 to 2021, and the market is still set to reach $218.7 billion in 2024[3] without breaking a sweat. Mobile gaming alone should bring in about $120 billion in 2021, or a 20% increase vs year’s average.

This will also be the first full year for the new consoles, with an audience of consumers eager to buy — or be gifted one — this holiday season. And across the board, for both console and mobile gaming, there will be more titles available than there were after last year’s somewhat thin offering, due to COVID-related delays for some game launches.

Now is the time for companies to leverage the Q4 holiday marketing window to take advantage of this confluence of forces.

Capitalizing on the 2021 holiday season

There are a number of ways that game companies can ensure they’re staying on top of holiday shopping trends this year, beyond relying on the traditional bump in sales.

Auction pricing drops

In years past, pre-COVID, consumers were able to get goods shipped at the last minute, right before the holidays. This year, given ongoing supply chain issues, Colbert predicts that some major retailers will shift that window up a bit. As retailers close up their marketing for the year in that earlier mid-December time frame, it opens up less competition in any auction-based platform for gaming advertisers.

“We think there will be opportunities for gaming companies to take advantage of this extended window of marketing, by taking advantage of better auction pricing,” Colbert says. “What hurts the retailers might actually help the gaming companies attract some consumers.”

Expanded targeting

But this year it’s also important to that gaming companies not just rely on the tried-and-true methods of attracting or targeting their hardcore users.

“As the audience of gamers has increased, developers can take advantage of this opportunity by broadening their audiences — finding the newer or more casual gamers and converting them into loyal customers,” he says.

Global thinking

It’s also time to start looking at the full holiday calendar. Across the world, there are a number of key holidays from early November through New Year’s[4]. Even in places where Christmas is celebrated, the window for gift giving can vary significantly. Consider timing your advertising buys carefully to the calendar.

Navigating the new normal

The holiday season will be a huge boon to game companies, but in this new world, where the audience is bigger and advertising is more difficult and more expensive, it’s time to start thinking in the longer term.

Embrace AI-powered auctions

With the ATT enforcement by Apple, advertisers needed a way to continue hitting KPIs (or business objectives) with limited campaigns and optimization levers. Facebook’s Automated App Ads product allows advertisers to rely on machine learning to still find high-quality users despite these challenges.

“There’s a tendency for gaming companies to try to pull levers and dials and manipulate their targeting on their own,” Colbert says “The Automated App Ads product uses a proprietary algorithm to find the best and most valuable users across our various platforms and do it in an automated fashion.”

Evolve user acquisition

User acquisition is essential, but it can’t be the end-all, be-all. It’s only a part of a much larger equation for successful growth.

“The biggest piece of advice I can offer is to take a full funnel approach,” Colbert says. “That’s something we’re trying to hammer home. Brand plus performance is where you have to go.”

While ATT has impacted user acquisition, that’s not the only reason to widen your strategy — that’s just the proper marketing mix, he adds.

Rethink the relationship

The question needs to go beyond, how do we find customers, and become, how do we keep them?

“User acquisition has been the barometer of success in the gaming world, but I would challenge both ourselves and our gaming partners to think about the customer relationship,” Colbert says. “It’s not just how you acquire that customer, but how you keep them, how you communicate with them, how you engage with them and delight them over the long term.”

To gain additional insights into the best times to advertise your games on Facebook during the holiday season, visit here.

[1] Newzoo 2021, “Global Games Market Report,” July 2021; 2020 recorded significant growth which was linked to high growth resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic

[2] NPD,”29% of Consumers Plan to Spend More on Holiday Shopping Than They Did Last Year, Reports NPD,” September 2021; Source: NPD survey.

[3] App Annie,”State of Mobile Gaming 2021,” 2021. Source: App Annie Intelligence; Downloads and Consumer Spend are across iOS, Google Play, Third-Party Android in China combined; Spend is gross — inclusive of any percent taken by the app stores

[4] Kathy Quinn, “Gift-Giving Around the World,” MTM LinguaSoft, accessed Oct. 7, 2021/

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