How to reach gamers and understand gaming experiences: IAB PlayFronts

“We’ve been trying to compete for media dollars by talking about how gaming is mass entertainment for playing the ‘scale’ card,” said IAB’s vice president, Experience Center, Zoe Soon, at IAB PlayFronts last week. “But a gamer is more than a consumer. Gaming is entertainment-plus.”

The full gaming experience for many users includes a sense of community, relaxation, social connections and, yes, commerce, Soon said.

“Gaming is not only a key to our industry’s future, but it’s an integral part of the here-and-now,” said IAB CEO David Cohen.

Why we care. Forty percent of gaming advertisers plan to up their spend in the coming year to reach 213 million U.S. gamers, according to IAB’s recent study. The way these consumers play games and engage with brands is widely varied. At PlayFronts, experts across the industry shared gaming behaviors and trends essential to how marketers can reach this audience.

Mobile-centric gamers. Seventy-nine percent of gamers play mobile games and 35% play games exclusively on mobile, according to video game research firm Newzoo.

Three “mobile-centric” gamer personas were shared at PlayFronts by Clement Xue, general manager, and Jordan Shlachter, head of measurement and insights at Activision Blizzard. Activision Blizzard’s acquisition by Microsoft was finalized last year, a deal valued at over $75 billion.

The personas include:

• Gaming Veterans: On average they’ve played games for 21 years. 67% play games to relax. 37% play on PC and mobile at least once a week.
• Late Adopters: 78% are women. 61% play mobile games daily. They average nine hours of gaming per week.
• Casual Connectors: 82% play games at least once a week. 38% play games for the social aspects of playing. 42% agree gaming “brings people together.”

“Puzzle games and other casual games have broad appeal to a wide audience,” said Shlachter.

“We put players at the center of the all the experiences we create,” said Xue. “And this presents a great opportunity for players to play the games they want with the people they want, anywhere that they want.”

Dig deeper: How marketers are investing in games

To reach gamers on mobile in a way that supports the user’s preferred experience, Activision Blizzard announced three new ad formats:

• Long-form skippable video ads that take up the entire phone screen.
• Story carousel ads that users can select from a series of thumbnails.
• Engagement rewards tied to a sponsor help the user advance in the game.

Easier Roblox ads and experiences. Immersive game platform Roblox supports a beta version of its self-service Ads Manager. Advertisers and agencies can select billboards in-game to show ads, or as sponsored experience tiles when players engage with Home, Discover or Search pages.

In addition to these static ads, brands can build interactive branded experiences in the game. In-game branded experiences are more enmeshed with gameplay, promising deeper engagement. Roblox’s current policy dictates that no ads are served to players under 13. Fifty-eight percent of Roblox’s audience is 13 and older, and its fastest-growing demographic is 17 to 34, according to Ashley McCollum, head of immersive media solutions at Roblox.

Super League, an immersive experiences marketing company and game creator, offers scalable experiences for brands, including pop-up experiences in-game for Roblox — standing these experiences up in three to four weeks. Super League also provides measurement for ad performance. The company’s benchmarks became the first such measurements verified by Nielsen for Roblox experiences. One of the most effective tactics Super League uses is through in-game pollsters who conduct interactive surveys with players while they’re on Roblox. Once one of these branded pop-ups is created, Super League can push it to other virtual-world games at scale.

“If you’re building a branded experience, that’s kind of the north star, but not every brand is there yet,” said Julie Piskin, head of Roblox’s global partner program. “So there’s ways to integrate — you can drive media in our video product. There’s a lower barrier to entry, where you don’t necessarily have to have a world already existing on Roblox, so you can just dive in and start to test your reach with the audience.”

The CTV connection. There is a strong affinity between gamers, especially console gamers, and streaming TV. A new study from Samsung Ads makes this case. This means that advertisers who think cross-channel between CTV and games can increase their impact on gamers who consume both.

“Lots of us of a certain age, we think of back when we connected gaming consoles (Atari, Nintendo) to the TV,” said Justin Fromm, head of insights at Samsung Ads. “What’s fascinating is that two-thirds actually watch TV and play games side-by-side, together. And that audience is reachable by advertising in both of those environments. Advertisers need to think about their gaming and the CTV advertising holistically.”

On average, gamers spend nearly two hours per day watching streamed content, with 92% both playing games and streaming in a single day.

Cloud gaming. Marketers should also know about the large number who play over the cloud. Fifty-one percent of Samsung Smart TV owners say they play games primarily on smartphones or tablets. Three-quarters (76%) said they play games on multiple devices — they start a game on one device and continue the same game on another.

“I liken it to streaming,” said Fromm. “Streaming today is everywhere. You can start a show on TV, and pick up the same show on a tablet on the way to work. Or if you want, tune in at work to college basketball on a desktop.”

Similarly, gamers are using multiple devices to play the same games. And these gamers can be reached through multichannel campaigns.