The gaming industry is at an all-time high, surpassing the music and movie sectors in influence and revenue. Advertisers are now investing a significant percentage of their marketing budgets toward gamers.
As advertisers gain a better sense of who gamers are and their preferences, they uncover a more sophisticated understanding of the gaming landscape. With this, brands and media buyers are beginning to use more game-specific ad tools to target a variety of games in their marketing mix and learn what works best for them.
Between navigating ad blockers, the custom maps offered within Fortnite and in-play moment-triggered ads, advertisers are finding more cost-effective, scalable methods to reach gamers during playtime and while they’re consuming gaming-related content.
Gamers are spread across various platforms, from PCs and consoles to mobile. They engage with a wide range of game genres (from AAA titles such as League of Legends and Fortnite to hyper-casual mobile games like Candy Crush), all with different attitudes, demographics (age, gender, geography) and spending habits.
In this way, advertisers now recognize that different gamers in different game categories will be more relevant to specific product marketing. With this understanding, brands are able to target specific products to particular gamers in certain game categories based on their preferences and behavior.
Within the prized 18–34-year-old demographic, over 75% aren’t reachable on Twitch, and 89% aren’t reachable on IGN due to browser ad blockers, according to Comscore 2023 — one reason why in-game advertising has become more of a mainstay in media buyers’ budgets.
As brands turn to premium titles, Fortnite’s customizable maps have become the latest battleground for brands — allowing advertisers to work with external partners to build their own mini-games inside the Fortnite framework of over 200 million monthly players.
These maps offer an expansive canvas for brands to create unique experiences that engage gamers during playtime, demonstrated by the plethora of best-in-class builds by Nike,