Is the gaming industry the new marketing channel?

Posted by Juego Studios on August 8th, 2018

Billboards, print media, direct mail, online advertisement, radio and television have always defined marketing. The gaming industry is now increasingly being seen as one of the new frontiers for marketing. In the contemporary social media world where well planned and executed marketing campaigns fail miserably there is a need for an engaging marketing channel which the gaming industry very well satisfies. This increased engagement is the main reason why various non-game elements and processes are being gamified. On other hand, in the USA gaming industry (revenue per year is around billion) is bigger than the movie industry (revenue per year is around billion). Hence there is a lot of potential for marketing in gaming.

According to Electronic Arts and Unity Games there were about 10 crore gamers in 1995. In 2006 however the number jumped to around 2.6 billion. As per Meeker’s report, video games garner more attention than Facebook itself. There is a popular game making company called the King which has produced mind blowingly addictive games like Candy Crush and Pet Rescue. In terms of daily user engagement King(35 minutes) has surpassed Snapchat(30 minutes) and Instagram(21 minutes). Audiences are turning their backs to banner ads and are choosing to block them. People are also skipping video advertising most of the time(when was the last time you willingly saw a Youtube ad?).

Esports

Ever since 2010, electronic sports has risen to huge popularity. eSports tournaments have turned out to be events of massive scale that bring in massive audiences all over the world. The success of eSports lies in the fact that it can host prizes of millions of dollars. The reason behind this is that the fans purchase virtual items, boosts, in-game content and other levels. Major brands have not let this opportunity pass and are capitalizing heavily on this. Red Bull has built its image by hosting huge physical activities like sky diving, space jumping etc. It has considerably upped its strategy where it has built up huge levels of content marketing around eSports along with covering new developments in the games and interviewing players with highest scores.

In game advertisement

The lifeblood of free to play mobile games is the advertising revenue from them. This can be an easy way for brands for leverage the gaming world.

Various kinds of advertisement models can be spurred by partnering with the gaming ad platform includes:

• Display ads – Consists of banner ads and full screen pop up ads
• Native ads – Has sponsored messaging and events
• Video ads – contains expanded video banners and rewarded video ads
• Rich media ads – Contains full screen interactive display ads, mini-games and surveys

Banner ads can be used for branding while interstitial pop ups can be accompanied with free samples or discounts. Rewarded video ads are viewed more as it comes with in-app purchases and game related content.

Things marketers can learn from gamers

Games have skills intertwined with the games like levelling up, competing, collaborating and others. Now think how good it would be if we gamified them. Inducing a sense of competition is always good but what would be more good is when the process can be more collaborative and that which fosters team play. Moosejaw did that where gift cards were put on sale for initial price of and then gradually increased to . The catch here is that those customers who came first got the low prices. They also introduced a team building feature where a player could increase his chances of winning a deal if he invited his friends.

Puzzle solving

Using creative strategies to gamify their content marketing is what entails puzzle marketing. Heineken used it marvellously in Instagram where it left photo clues to find the final photo and win prizes.  

Conclusion

As the gaming industry matures more and more so will the marketing strategies that will go along with it. What sets apart marketing in other mediums and that of gaming is that in gaming the player will be highly immersed in the game he plays. Whatever impressions he receives will get deeply internalized into his mental sphere. This simple fact is going underlooked at large as more sophisticated marketing strategies are yet to work their magic in gaming.