November 14, 2023 | By Jamie Lyons
This story was originally published by WARC.
Gaming is primed to cement its position in culture and across screens, but what trends should marketers be looking out for and leaning into this coming year? The coming year teases further mainstream entertainment and cultural cross-pollination through the continued roll out of TV and films inspired by games. 2024 will see the industry embrace the codification and widespread usage of more nuanced (and frankly useful) nomenclature for gaming aligned spaces, media opportunities and audiences. Game media activations have shown consistently in attention studies that they have the potential to outperform the rest of the media plan in delivering cost-effective attention.
Why it matters
While in-game advertising isn’t a new space, a shift in conversation and culture – in parallel with a growing stable of immersive and impactful media inventory – has increasingly brought gaming into focus as a marketing channel for brands and agencies.
Takeaways
1.) By establishing terminology which demystifies the technical and clearly defines currently ambiguous terms we democratise the space, making it easier for marketers to specify what they want to achieve and therefore more likely to engage.
2.) With AI already applied effectively within video game production, we can expect to see similar technology unlocking increased efficiencies and opportunities for brands looking to leverage gaming.
3.)Many brands are looking to enter a dialogue with existing communities and to shape and grow their own, rather than focussing on data-driven audience buys and CRM growth in isolation.
With broadcast’s diminishing reach to younger audiences over the past few years, much has been made of the growing opportunity for non-endemic brands to leverage gaming to pick up the slack.
While in-game advertising isn’t a new space, a shift in conversation and culture – in parallel with a growing stable of immersive and impactful media inventory – has increasingly brought gaming into focus as a marketing channel for brands and agencies.
This is only set to grow over the course of next year. PWC has forecast that video games advertising will be worth more than $91bn globally in 2024 as it climbs ever nearer to the value of TV advertising.
The coming year teases further mainstream entertainment and cultural cross-pollination through the continued roll out of TV and films inspired by games. We can expect Sonic the Hedgehog, Gran Turismo and Borderlands movies, a television series set in the world of Fallout and there are dozens of other properties currently in production. It feels as though the successes of The Last of Us series and The Super Mario Bros. Movie have ensured gaming IP is poised to topple superhero franchises from their domination of big budget entertainment.
The considerable buzz behind these theatrical releases will however likely pale in comparison with the widely rumoured (eventual) arrival of GTA VI in 2024. Despite being launched in 2013, GTA V is consistently among the top 10 most played games around the world almost a decade later. The launch of the sixth instalment is widely expected to break records.
Within the gaming industry itself we’re set to see disruption in 2024. The ripple effects of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard will not only play a role in the console wars – with Xbox expanding its roster of high-profile exclusive titles – but will also have an impact on subscription gaming services and even esports.
Ubisoft and EA are creating their own subscription services with the available options proliferating in a manner similar to SVOD. It may however be that the competitive advantage Xbox Game Pass gains from the incorporation of the Activision Blizzard catalogue (which boasts 400m players worldwide) could ensure its dominance within its hardware ecosystem and across key PC gaming audience segments. Historically Microsoft hasn’t been a major player in the esports world, but through Activision Blizzard it’s now custodian of significant competitive titles. With millions of engaged followers of Call of Duty, Overwatch and Starcraft, Microsoft has license to play a more meaningful role in the space at large.
Gaming is primed to cement its position in culture and across screens, but what trends should marketers be looking out for and leaning into this coming year?
An evolution of language
The 2022 labels of ‘metaverse’ and ‘gamer’ have broken down over the course of 2023; the former has lost its gloss due to a promise it couldn’t possibly deliver in the short term, whereas the latter has proven too broad. With 3.3bn people playing games globally, the term ‘gamer’ could refer to 50% of the population.
It thankfully looks as though 2024 will see the industry embrace the codification and widespread usage of more nuanced (and frankly useful) nomenclature for gaming aligned spaces, media opportunities and audiences – a view that is supported across the IAB’s agency gaming steering group.
By establishing terminology which demystifies the technical and clearly defines currently ambiguous terms we democratise the space, making it easier for marketers to specify what they want to achieve and therefore more likely to engage.
Roblox and Fortnite taking divergent paths in the emerging virtual universe
With a vision to make Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) as powerful as Unreal Engine 5, EPIC Games is essentially priming Fortnite to become much more than a game – instead evolving into a dimensionalised version of the internet. This will be an environment in which brands can create immersive, explorable worlds serving as an extension of their physical and digital real-estate.
Roblox, however, having already created a platform which encourages the development of brand-owned worlds, is tackling different challenges. It’s endeavouring to ‘age up’ its ecosystem and create extensions and services which tap into other facets of life than just play. This includes enabling communication, leaning into commerce services, and even potentially developing a dating business. In parallel with end-user facing updates, it’s supercharging its media capabilities with its Partner Program and allowing brands to tap into its millions of engaged eyeballs as easily as they do current social media platforms.
These platforms are poised to deliver on a lot of what the metaverse promised from an experiential perspective, opening the door to even more time spent in social virtual environments.
Gaming delivering on the promise of three dominant media topics in 2023
- Artificial Intelligence – AI is fuelling accelerated game development through procedural generation, allowing for richer worlds with randomised map creation and more challenging gameplay by virtue of enhanced NPC ‘intelligence’. With AI already applied effectively within video game production, we can expect to see similar technology unlocking increased efficiencies and opportunities for brands looking to leverage gaming. Potential territories could include native in-game integrations at scale, collaboration with virtual influencers in the streaming space or faster and more cost effective branded virtual experience builds.
- Attention – The emergence of cost-effective means of capturing metrics related to attentive reach and attentive seconds has led many brands to embrace more sophisticated measurement and reporting approaches. This evolution from KPIs based on blanket impression reach equips us to better understand if a media activation has cut-through noise and commanded consumer focus. Game media activations have shown consistently in attention studies that they have the potential to outperform the rest of the media plan in delivering cost-effective attention. Lumen studies have benchmarked in-game advert viewability at 98% versus a digital ad benchmark of 78%. While Amplified Intelligence found that rewarded video in games delivered more than 10 times the passive and active attention achieved by the majority of the mobile and social video formats they tested. This growing bank of data points and new product evolutions such as Activision Blizzard Media’s Attention Measurement Scorecard are highly likely to lead to further investment in these areas through 2024.
- Communities – With cookie deprecation imminent and continual change to data privacy regulation it’s no surprise that brands are more interested than ever in the notion of communities. Many are looking to enter a dialogue with existing communities and to shape and grow their own, rather than focussing on data-driven audience buys and CRM growth in isolation. At the vanguard of ‘community marketing’ are comparatively nascent platforms (certainly in media terms) such as Reddit, Discord and Twitch. Each of these environments has an incredibly robust connection with gaming, with an expansive array of communities mobilising around a shared passion for a game, genre, creator or gaming organisation.
With marketers on the lookout for credible and authentic means of engaging with communities relevant to their brand, we’re set to see a growing number of gaming-oriented community partnerships and campaigns.
Gaming has been a major player in the entertainment industry with a vast audience for more than a decade. However, since the pandemic marketers have become increasingly aware of its full potential.
As crossover with film and television continues and a more mature marketing ecosystem emerges, it’s poised to truly breakthrough as a mainstream media and cultural touchpoint.
With so much on the horizon for 2024, now is the time for brands to ensure that they are well placed to harness the opportunity.
