TV has always been the mass-market media of choice for brands, providing huge, emotionally engaged audiences across a wide range of content designed to appeal to specific groups, says Erik Goossens*. But the way we consume entertainment media has changed dramatically over the past few years and the TV is no longer the living room focal point it once was. The problem this poses for brands is that as the first chinks in television’s armour start to appear, they are left looking for an alternative. Could online gaming be the answer?
Certainly the audience figures would seem to point to this. In January 2014, online gaming websites had 662 million UVs globally (comScore). This represents 41% of the total online audience. Not only that, online gaming offers a true cross-screen experience as it increasingly gives users the ability to play pretty much the same games across all devices. Indeed, 50% of the total online audience also played games on touch devices in January.
This cross-screen appeal is further highlighted in the recent Europe Online Gaming Market 2014 report from Research and Markets, which looked at device usage across Europe, finding that online gaming is a huge market in the UK with around 20% of the overall population using the Net to play games. Within this user base, tablets are the first choice of over a third of mobile device owners, while half of all tablet owners play games. In Germany, consoles and PC are still popular for online gaming, but mobile and social platforms are gaining importance.
In France, the desktop is the device most frequently used for online gaming, closely followed by the smartphone. In Belgium, the largest group of gamers plays social or casual games, with the mobile audience also being significant for online gaming. A similar pattern is observed in Spain.
In a recent gaming conference in London, Nadya Powell, UK md of social communications MRY and a staunch advocate of online gaming as a media channel, summed up the current position and opportunity, “Gaming is a huge part of people’s online activities – it is the most popular activity on tablets and second-most popular on smartphones, and it offers huge reach and engagement.”
Despite this, “brand spend in online gaming remains low. Budgets assigned to gaming by brands are a small fraction of total digital spend. The numbers just don’t add up,” she added.
So why are advertisers not seeing the bigger picture here?
Undoubtedly, there are still misconceptions about the size and spread of the online gaming audience – for many the sector remains tarred with the brush that it it comprises largely teenage boys in their basements. However, the rise in popularity of games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds have introduced a whole new audience to online gaming and it is now a major part of everyone’s online activities, with broad cross-demographic appeal.
One of the things that brand owners find surprising is that the mal4-to-female ratio of gamers is split quite evenly – 54% to 46%. And this is fairly consistent across younger demographics. Although it is staggering to think that in the UK, more women than men between the ages of 35-44 are now playing online games.
Beyond this, it also offers an engaged audience. At Spil Games we see around 180 million monthly active users across our family of platforms, with average playing times of more than 30 minutes per visit. Compare this with 15 minutes per visit for YouTube and even less (around five minutes) for traditional news sites, and gaming clearly has the edge.
Another misconception is around risk. But here, I think it’s important to let the numbers do the talking. We’ve already pointed to the impressive average session times and the vast loyal audience, however, where online gaming really wins is in its ability to target audiences. The data analysis that can be run on people playing online games, means audience profiling can be refined to a degree that TV can only dream of. This leads to more relevant ads being presented to players and ultimately a more rewarding experience for all parties.
So, where’s the risk? Online gaming has a broad target audience that are engaged, in a positive state of mind and can be accurately targeted. It also has scale… outside of TV, few media channels can really claim this.
If you’ve read this far, my advice is simple. Go and take another look at the online gaming sector. The opportunities are good and the rewards can be great.
*Erik Goossens is the CEO of Spil Games