Gaming industry is growing fast. There are more than 3 billion players globally, and over 190 million people in the US played games regularly in 2023. Gaming audiences are valuable target groups for advertisers, so marketers are looking for effective ways to find gamers and reach them in online campaigns.
Gaming is getting popularity around the world
Video games are a part of today’s daily life. Players are everywhere and they can choose many platforms to play and hundreds of games. Everyone will find something tailored to their interests. Globally there were over 3.3 billion players in 2023 and this number is still growing. In such a large group, marketers can find almost every kind of target audience. It is one of the main reasons why marketers are turning into gaming advertising.
Massive popularity of games brings big investments in the gaming industry. Video game market grows regularly. This year it will exceed 455 billion USD and will grow to more than 625 billion USD in 2028. Marketers see that gaming channel is valuable and allows them to reach players easily, so they plan to move their budgets to that channel and improve the engagement of target audiences.
According to the IAB’s report, over 90% of advertisers say that games advertising help them reach consumers where they are and engage with the right audience. What’s more, it’s a trusted, and growing channel. 40% of marketers globally plan to increase their spending on gaming advertising in 2024.
Gaming advertising is an important part of today’s marketing mix. Now let’s take a closer look at profiles of gamers, and let’s check who they really are.
Who are today’s players?
What are popular myths about gamers? We can just type this phrase to instantly find some common mistakes about gamers. The most characteristic examples – players are mostly young boys, socially isolated, and generally lazy. But it’s simply not true.
Nowadays, advertisers can find almost every social group among gamers. Firstly, let’s check the average age of gamers and gender. According to techopedia, stats show that the average gamer age is 35. So they are not kids, as one of the most popular myth about players suggests.
Secondly, games are not only for boys. If we take a look at stats, there were about 1.7 billion male gamers and nearly 1.4 billion female gamers. So, advertisers can easily reach men and women, targeting players.
What’s even more interesting from the advertisers’ point of view is that gamers are a highly valuable target group. Their spending power can be even 2x higher than non-gamers. And there are differences between spending on games among a specific group of gamers.
Super Gamers (gamers who view gaming as their primary source of entertainment) spend on video games monthly nearly 8x as much as casual gamers (gamers who only view gaming as an entertainment option). So, if advertisers want to promote for example a specific game, they should consider reaching out to Super Gamers to improve campaigns’ effectiveness.
After fighting with some myths about gamers, it’s not surprising why big brands, such as BMW or Mercedes are investing heavily in gaming. Companies from various industries can find their target audiences among players, and gamers are often a comfortable group, whose spending power is higher than average citizens. They are titbit for advertisers globally. So, how can marketers reach gamers?
How to reach gaming audiences in online campaigns?
There are many ways to reach gamers, including in-game ads, cooperation with big publishers, and many more. Here we’ll focus on one of the fastest ways to reach gaming target audiences in online campaigns, by using audience data.
If you want to reach a specific target gaming audience, you can just type the name of segments you are looking for, on global platforms, such as The Trade Desk, Adform, or Microsoft Advertising.
Many companies provide gaming taxonomies and you can find segments with fans of specific game titles or genres by typing the name of the segment and choosing the right data provider.
Gaming data providers offer data that comes from various sources and devices. You can reach your target audiences on mobile devices (on the basis of MAIDS), on desktop (cookies or Universal IDs), or on the CTV devices (CTV IDs).
Not every data provider deliver all kinds of IDs, so before you choose one, just check the reach (number of IDs on a specific market) and what kind of user ID the company provides.
Here are just a few examples of gaming audience available to target:
- Gaming > Genre > Retro
- Gaming > Title > Pac-man
- Mobile Gaming > Genre > MOBA
- Gaming > Devices & Platforms > Console
- Gaming > Hardware > Keyboards
- Gaming > User Types > Night Gamers
Segments above represent just a few examples. Companies provide hundreds of segments in their taxonomies. But if you’re looking for a specific segment, tailored to your campaigns’ needs, you can create a custom segment and use it to reach your group. To build one, just contact your chosen data provider and ask if the company offers creating segments.
OAN gaming audiences – choose your target audience from over 600 segments globally
As OAN, we provide gaming audiences globally to help marketers reach their target groups among players. Reach your target gaming audience from over 600 high-quality gaming audiences divided into groups, such as:
- Gaming -> Demography
- Gaming -> Devices & Platforms
- Gaming -> Game Studios
- Gaming -> Genre
- Gaming -> User Types
- and many more categories.
We also provide custom gaming segments. We build them on special occasions, such as big gaming premieres, and we can prepare a custom segment tailored strictly to your campaign’s needs.
If you need to reach, for example, gamers from generation Z, from big cities in Western Europe, just contact us to talk about creating this segment.