Gaming is serious business
Why gaming should be a part of your FY23 strategy, writes Xander Southwick, head of social APAC at Livewire.
With an estimated 17 million Australians playing video games in some form (with a near even gender split), gaming is an advertising channel that is incredibly underutilised by Australian marketers.
Despite the average Australian gamer spending 83 minutes playing daily, the investment into the space is lagging despite the significant opportunity to capture the white space. If we follow the PWC Australian Entertainment and Media Outlook, gaming advertising revenue is estimated to reach $74m in 2023, under the midpoint forecast scenario. At the same time, search is expected to reach $4.6bn, video $3bn and display $4.8bn. So, why aren’t brands taking advantage?
What it means to advertise in games has evolved. In the earliest stages of in-game advertising, brands would be hard coded into the game itself, with limitations in terms of the integration variety on offer by developers. Alongside this, the only way to remove or update these placements were through major updates to the game. Today, modern gaming has allowed brand integrations to be delivered in a multitude of ways. These different delivery options allow marketers to maximise their impact as well, from high quality rewarded videos, through to audio ads that don’t interrupt the gameplay, ultimately the channel provides mass reach and the capability to deliver distinctive assets.
