Allegro rewards players with over a million Smart! Coins

E-commerce platforms face a fundamental problem when approaching gaming audiences: gamers can smell advertising from miles away. Traditional retail brands attempting to “enter gaming” typically follow a predictable playbook: sponsor an esports team, run banner ads during streams, maybe create a branded Twitch overlay. These approaches share a common flaw – they treat gamers as an advertising target rather than a community to join.

For Poland’s largest e-commerce platform, this presented a unique challenge: how could Allegro demonstrate that it wasn’t just another brand trying to sell to gamers, but genuinely understood and valued gaming culture?

The answer required abandoning the traditional playbook entirely.

The challenge: belonging, not broadcasting

Allegro entered 2024 with a clear objective that went far beyond campaign metrics. As Poland’s dominant e-commerce platform, the company recognized that gaming represented a fundamental shift in how younger consumers spent their time, money, and attention. Allegro recognized that gaming functions as an ecosystem with its own language, values, and economy. Successfully entering that ecosystem required speaking its native language.

The strategic question became: what does gaming culture value that Allegro could authentically provide?

The insight: experience is gaming’s universal currency

The breakthrough came through understanding a fundamental truth about why people play games: progression. Gamers don’t play simply for entertainment – they play to earn experience points, level up characters, unlock achievements, and demonstrate mastery. This progression system represents gaming’s core emotional satisfaction.

Traditional brand activations in gaming ignore this principle. A banner ad doesn’t contribute to a player’s progression. A sponsored stream segment doesn’t advance their character. These interruptions extract attention without providing value in gaming’s native currency: meaningful experience.

Allegro’s insight was to recognize that Smart! Coins – could function as a bridge between gaming achievement and real-world value. If challenges could be designed that felt like natural extensions of gameplay, smart coins could transform from “marketing reward” to “earned progression.”

Building the experience platform

The execution required custom technology that didn’t exist in the market. Working with Overwolf’s ecosystem and securing official partnership with Riot Games, the team built a challenge platform that integrated directly with League of Legends, Valorant, and Teamfight Tactics.

The Overwolf application: seamless integration

The custom Overwolf app was designed around a single principle: never change player behavior. The gamEXP application monitored gameplay natively. When a player accepted a challenge and completed it during natural gameplay – securing a pentakill, winning consecutive matches, reaching specific rankings – the achievement was automatically detected and registered. No screenshots. No verification codes. No interruption of the gaming experience.

This native integration was possible through Overwolf’s framework, which allows applications to access game data in real-time while maintaining performance standards. The application overlay provided challenge progress, available rewards, and earned smart coins without disrupting the player’s focus on gameplay.

Custom streaming drops: earning through watching

Beyond in-game challenges, the platform pioneered a custom drop system for livestreaming viewers. The gamEXP system rewarded viewers watching participating streamers with Smart! Coins directly through Allegro’s platform. The dual earning system – challenges for players, drops for viewers – created a comprehensive ecosystem where engagement with gaming content directly translated to tangible value.

Allegro gamEXP was not only the brand’s first strong entry into gaming, but also one of the most technologically advanced and “insider” campaigns in the history of gamer marketing. We are all the more pleased with the direct feedback from the game developers themselves, who said that the project was not only unique, but also perfectly embedded in the everyday life of gamers, and even “the best [most gamer-friendly]” they had ever seen.

Marek Spadło, Strategy & Creative Director, inStreamly

Execution at scale: 1 million reasons to participate

Throughout Q3 and Q4 2025, the campaign’s most striking element was its unprecedented prize pool: 1 million Smart! Coins distributed across the gaming community. 

The streamer network

Over 1,000 streamers participated in the campaign, including Poland’s most prominent gaming creators: Izak, Gucio, and Nieuczesana among them. Rather than treating streamers as advertising channels, they became genuine participants – completing challenges themselves, earning rewards, and demonstrating to their communities that the platform delivered real value.

Official partnership with Riot Games

The campaign’s credibility stemmed partly from securing official licensing and support from Riot Games. This partnership provided access to game assets, ensured compliance with Riot’s community standards, and signaled to the gaming community that this was a legitimate activation. Riot’s involvement also enabled the technical integration depth required for automatic challenge verification. Their support validated that Allegro’s approach aligned with Riot’s own values around player experience.

Results: permanent presence achieved

The campaign generated exceptional engagement metrics:

• 19,884 active participants completed challenges
• 1,000+ streamers integrated the platform into their content
• 200 million+ impressions collectively across YouTube and Twitch platforms

These brand lift numbers tell the real story. Allegro didn’t just run a successful campaign – it fundamentally shifted how gamers perceived the brand’s relationship to their culture. The improvement in Brand Perception specifically indicates that gamers came to see Allegro as belonging in gaming spaces, not intruding upon them.

For us, the ultimate KPI was community acceptance: and we hit the jackpot. BlackFireIce, a veteran streamer active for over a decade, called Allegro gamEXP “the best viewer-focused activation” of his entire career.

The template for authentic gaming presence

The gamEXP with Allegro campaign succeeded by rejecting the premise that gaming represents an advertising channel to exploit. Instead, it demonstrated what becomes possible when brands commit to becoming genuine participants in gaming culture.

For brands attempting to establish an authentic presence in gaming culture, the lesson is clear: the question isn’t “How do we advertise to gamers?” but rather “What value can we provide that gaming culture will recognize as genuine?”

Allegro answered that question by building experience that gamers wanted to participate in voluntarily. The 19,884 players who completed challenges and the 200 million impressions generated across streaming platforms represent not captured attention, but earned engagement.