Hoopla Interactive is a next generation platform which seeks to extend consumer engagement beyond the initial connection to digital content. We recently had the opportunity to meet with Ellis Johnson who heads up Hoopla Interactive in the Australian market.
The Toy Universe had the pleasure of speaking with Ellis Johnson, the Sales Director at Hoopla Interactive. In an era of increasing media fragmentation, the ability to achieve quick cut-through and deeply engage customers is paramount, particularly within the Toy Industry. Hoopla Interactive, a new breed of digital advertising platform where creativity is central, specializes in providing branded solutions across online video, display, and mobile. They expertly combine premium environments, exclusive content, and innovative formats to deliver immersive brand experiences across all devices, ultimately driving interaction and improving your sales line.
With a proven track record of success, Hoopla has already onboarded several significant global brands including LEGO, Zuru, MGA, and Nintendo. We posed some key questions to Ellis to understand exactly how Hoopla can help connect you with your customer, ensuring the message is clear, simple, and inspires a call to action to make a purchase based on the experience. Ellis will provide valuable insights into how Hoopla can assist your organization in growing your sales line, and we’re very much looking forward to a valuable conversation.
Ellis, to begin with, can you give us a quick snapshot of what Hoopla Interactive brings, particularly for Toy Companies?
Hoopla Interactive is an Attention advertising specialist that designs engaging and fun adverts using existing assets and place them into popular kid safe environments (COPPA/GDPR-K). We ensure that Kids & Parents have a positive brand takeaway whilst getting to understand and be educated on the latest and best toys. We are a full eco-system and can help showcase across, Desktop, In-App, CTV and Youtube. All Designs & Builds are complimentary with supported Media Budget. Once built the creative asset becomes brand owned, meaning it can be used without charge in a wider range of media channels for further brand uplift (POS, OOH, print, social, email etc).
Can you tell us how the Hoopla team manages a new inquiry? How do you navigate a new customer into your system?
It’s really simple! After reaching out, we will organise a meeting to chat through your objectives, products you wish to promote, how they work and how we can bring them to life through one of our formats. Once we collate the information or receive a brief, your Sales Rep, alongside our amazing design team, will come up with a few ideas for all suitable budgets, provide a strategy for placements and a supported plan to showcase estimated results, reach and more. We handle all design and build in-house with minimal asset requirements, making it incredibly easy to create outstanding, immersive and engaging digital experiences. We work closely with your team throughout every step of the process, alleviating all of the headache.
Can you provide us with a simple explanation of your three product platforms – HooplAR, Hooplay, Hoopla Rich Media.
Hoopla Rich Media is our suite of High Impact solutions, which amplify existing assets. The Rich Media Player is probably our favourite as it’s an Interactive Video unit that is click to play with sound on from start. The video is supported by a clear & consistent branded skin for added call-outs. For all our Rich Media formats interactive features can be added to make the supporting display dynamic to video content or offer additional content outlets for selection.
HooPLAY is a playable ad unit that enables brands to engage their target audience through active participation vs traditional observation methods. Game concepts are curated based on target audience trend data to isolate play concepts that the user will be familiar with and instantly connect to. These formats really bring products to life and allow users to engage with a demonstration of the Product(s). With strong dwell time (50+ Seconds) and engagement of 65%, we ensure that users are not distracted throughout their experience.
HooplAR is an innovation in digital advertising allowing brands to access the rich interactivity that Augmented Reality offers within the scaled reach potential of a web environment. By bringing your Products and IP to life through the camera lens, we see users fully immersed in the experience with an unrivalled dwell time of 75+ Seconds.
What is the main value proposition that Hoopla Interactive brings which positions the services that you offer above other digital agencies?
Now in our 12th year globally, Hoopla has deep expertise in the toy space, enabling us to develop concepts that stay relevant in a fast-paced competitive market. We offer free design and build so your media spend goes further reaching as many kids as possible. Our interactive formats deliver measurable engagement, providing insights beyond traditional benchmarks. We’re also focused on delivering greater value and reach, including through our new transparent YouTube pricing model helping clients secure 3 to 4 times lower rates than other partners, with the same high-quality kids content and brand safety. Finally, we’ve partnered with Lumen to launch the first-ever COPPA-compliant Attention tool for kids, helping optimise toward real attention complimentary with any media spend.
How should Toy Companies engage with Hoopla to produce the best results?
Tell us your problems and challenges in the industry and we will curate custom solutions! Hoopla specialises in the Awareness and Consideration part of the sales funnel, ensuring that we can provide exciting formats which cut through the noise at that most crucial education stage. Kids and Parents alike are constantly bombarded with adverts, and it can become increasingly difficult to reach a wider audience and allow users to leave with a positive takeaway. From our recent study we have seen that after Kids have engaged with our units, 83% of them wanted to tell their friends and 66% of them were more likely to want or ask for the advertised product. (Hoopla x Lumen Report 2025).
Can you explain how Hoopla leverages the online space to maximise your results?
Hoopla have built a proprietary Keyword targeting technology which allows us to deliver messaging across video, gaming and content environments based on the type of content being viewed for greater brand alignment to the user’s interest. We have codified all our Kid-Safe inventory which allows us to drill down further by channels of Interest creating predictions of Gender and Age based on text, language & visual analysis. This is applied across App, Web, CTV and Youtube content.
Can you outline your tailored approach method to the content you create for your clients?
Your dedicated Sales Rep will be with you every step of the way. From initial concept and project management, right through to optimisation and post campaign analysis. We’re hands-on, detail-focused, and deeply invested in both the process and the partnership. Our goal? To bring your project to life together, with clear communication and shared success at every stage.
Can you give us a good example of toy content that produced a good outcome for your client?
We recently launched a highly successful Playable campaign for ZURU’s X-Shot range, and the results spoke for themselves. The campaign not only exceeded all key benchmarks but delivered impressive engagement — with users spending an average of 69 seconds interacting with the unit. What made this execution particularly powerful was the choice-driven gameplay. Audiences could select from four distinct mini-games, each one representing a different X-Shot product. This interactive format didn’t just drive strong dwell time. It also offered valuable insights into product preference and user behaviour, helping to inform future marketing and retail strategy.
Does Hoopla offer any modelling which through data analysis will deliver a commercial return?
In addition to our high-impact advertising formats, we offer a suite of studies designed to demonstrate and support commercial effectiveness. Through strategic partnerships with industry leaders, we provide data-backed insights into brand uplift (via Kantar), attention metrics (via Lumen), and sales performance (via Circana). Circana is a unique opportunity to understand how your active campaigns are penetrating the market, allowing you to gauge where further spend is needed and where you have dominance in the space.
This is all heat mapped with postcode breakdown. One standout is our groundbreaking Hoopla x Lumen Attention Study, the world’s first COPPA compliant eye-tracking attention study for kids. This unique research doesn’t just prove that our campaigns capture attention. It pinpoints exactly where attention is being held within the creative. It’s a powerful tool for optimising creative strategy and proving tangible value back to your team.
In the highly competitive market that we operate in it looks like Hoopla have developed an effective product that can improve engagement and generate real outcomes for your clients. We hope that potential Toy Companies contact you directly and visit your website to learn more.
This article originally appeared in Edition 15 of The Toy Universe Magazine
