As digital marketing evolves, so do the tools and strategies that drive success. In 2025, Artificial Intelligence is no longer just a buzzword, it’s a business-critical technology reshaping how brands reach their audiences.
One area where AI is making a significant impact is audience creation and segmentation, particularly for brands looking to tap into the rapidly growing gaming ecosystem.
With over 3.3 billion gamers worldwide and gaming now touching virtually every demographic, marketers can no longer afford to overlook this audience. But reaching gamers effectively requires more than just interest-based targeting, it demands precise, data-driven segmentation at scale. And that’s exactly where AI-powered audience creation comes in.
Traditional Audience Creation: Why It No Longer Works at Scale
Before AI entered the scene, building audience segments was a slow and often frustrating process for media planners and digital marketers. This was especially true for campaigns involving diverse audiences like gamers.
Here’s what the traditional method looked like:
- Manual brief interpretation – Campaign goals, platforms, and creative concepts were translated into criteria manually.
- Data selection – Planners had to search for relevant data points such as age, interests, device types, and behaviors.
- Segment creation – Each audience had to be built by hand using filters and targeting parameters.
- Testing and refinement – Initial campaigns were launched, and performance was analyzed to adjust or rebuild segments.
This process was not only time-consuming, often taking days or weeks, but also error-prone and difficult to scale across multiple regions or campaigns.
For gaming, this is a major limitation. Gaming audiences are fragmented across devices (PC, console, mobile), genres, regions, and engagement levels. A manual approach simply can’t keep up.
How AI Is Changing the Game in 2025
With AI and large language models (LLMs) now integrated into ad tech platforms, audience creation has gone from manual and reactive to automated and predictive. AI doesn’t just save time, it transforms what’s possible.
Here’s how:
1. Real-Time Audience Creation
AI algorithms can analyze campaign briefs in seconds, extract key criteria, and match them with the right data signals from massive datasets. Whether your brief includes “competitive mobile gamers in North America” or “console users with an interest in RPGs,” AI can immediately create accurate, ready-to-use segments.
2. Brief Understanding via LLMs
LLMs understand context, tone, and nuanced goals. This means fewer misinterpretations and better alignment between strategy and execution. The AI doesn’t just take keywords—it grasps your intended audience and translates that into actionable segments.
3. Scalable Personalization
With AI, personalization becomes scalable. Marketers can now run multi-market, multi-channel campaigns using highly tailored segments built around behavioral, contextual, and demographic data, without expanding their team or timeline.
4. Automation = Speed and Efficiency
The entire audience creation workflow (from interpreting the brief to creating segments and pushing them into DSPs) is now fully automated. What once took days can now happen in seconds, enabling marketers to react in real-time to market changes or campaign insights.
AI-Powered Audience Creation in Action
At OAN, we’ve developed an AI-powered segmentation engine built specifically to support modern media planning, especially for advertisers exploring gaming audiences.
Here’s what powers it:
- AI Engine: Understands and converts campaign briefs into specific audience parameters.
- LLMs: Interpret language with human-like understanding, ensuring context and intent are captured.
- High-Resolution Data Platform: Pulls from billions of data points, including purchase intent, device usage, and gaming preferences.
- Automated Workflow: Removes manual processes entirely, pushing audience segments into activation platforms.
These capabilities let marketers not only reach gamers, but reach the right gamers with the right message, at the right time, and on the right platform.
Why It Matters: Real Results for Digital Marketers
The benefits of AI in audience creation go far beyond speed:
- Better ROI: Accurate segments drive better performance across CTR, conversions, and customer acquisition.
- Improved Agility: Marketers can pivot faster and launch new campaigns without being bogged down by manual setup.
- Stronger Strategy: With more time freed from manual tasks, teams can focus on creative messaging and long-term planning.
- Scalable Growth: Whether you’re running 2 or 20 campaigns, AI allows you to scale without adding pressure to your team.
Why Gaming Marketers Should Care
Gaming is no longer a niche, it’s the mainstream. Gamers span every age group, region, and income level. They engage deeply with content, respond well to ads, and often have higher-than-average purchasing power.
But targeting them effectively requires nuance. For example:
- Console gamers may respond to premium brand ads.
- Mobile gamers often value short-form, performance-driven offers.
- Esports fans engage with lifestyle and entertainment brands.
- PC gamers show strong brand loyalty and interest in hardware.
AI helps identify and segment these gamer types instantly, something that would take weeks to build manually.
The Future of Audience Segmentation Is Now
As AI adoption accelerates, 72% of organizations globally were using AI by the end of 2024, its influence on marketing will only deepen in 2025. For digital marketers, especially those integrating gaming into their media mix, now is the time to embrace AI-powered segmentation.
The future is automated, intelligent, and data-rich. AI is the bridge between raw data and real results.
Ready to Reach Gamers Smarter?
At OAN, we combine advanced AI technology with a large dataset of gamers’ data. Whether you’re entering the gaming market for the first time or scaling existing campaigns, our AI-powered audience segments help you move faster, target better, and deliver more value.