In-Game Advertising: An Impactful Channel for Entertainment Advertisers
When discussing recreational and entertainment activities, there's often a distinction between fiction, such as movies or TV series, video games, and sports. Yet, these activities are complementary. Even though gamers have only 24 hours daily, they often consume these contents simultaneously.
Gameloft demonstrates this synergy for brands, the in-game advertising division of the French video game publisher and owner of COMBO! The Gaming Media Network. A network that combines several key mobile game publishers and leverages in-game advertising to serve studios, broadcasters, and VoD platforms.
Having grown alongside sports and fiction, video games are now reciprocally influencing these industries, drawing inspiration from the mechanics and stories of major video game franchises, the world's leading entertainment industry. Remember: video games reach everyone. In France, the average age of players is 38. According to SELL (the Union of Leisure Software Publishers in France), 95% of 10-18 year-olds play games, as do 68% of adults, including 44% of those over 60. Video games have truly become a cross-generational pastime.
Advertisers have not overlooked this reality: in-game advertising revenues are expected to increase by 11% annually until 2030 globally, according to "The Marketing ROI in Gaming - The Positive Impact of Gaming for Brands" a study conducted by Gameloft for brands. Based on this observation, the entity launched the COMBO! network last year in partnership with prestigious mobile game publishers such as Rovio, Outfit7, Wooga, and Activision Blizzard. With the recent addition of Brazilian publisher Wildlife Studios, creator of Tennis Clash, this network has delivered more than 2.5 billion video impressions and continues to expand. COMBO! extends its ability to reach all target audiences, as one in three players worldwide plays at least one mobile game developed by the network's publishers, reaching over a billion people!
Video Games: An Ideal Advertising Lever for Entertainment Players
Transgenerational and inseparable from pop culture, video games are a fantastic channel for promoting movies, series, sports competitions, and, of course, other games. Gameloft for brands emphasizes this aspect in a new series of reports on gamers' consumption habits concerning SVOD platforms, cinema, and sports competitions like the 2023 Women's World Cup and Men's Rugby World Cup.
The reports reveal that 43% of players weekly watch at least five hours of content on subscription video-on-demand platforms. 67% play mobile games while watching these contents, and 37% do so while watching sports. Playing games is the primary mobile activity for people watching sports, while mobile is the second-most-used screen for sports viewing. Gaming and sports also converge in terms of performance offered to sponsors and advertisers. 54% of players are more inclined to consider a brand that sponsors a sports event and/or video game.
In-game advertising also presents tremendous opportunities for PC and console game publishers: two-thirds of mobile players also play on PC and/or console.
Furthermore, 64% of players aged 18 to 35 are more likely to buy a cinema ticket for a movie advertised in a game, as offered by COMBO!.
Interactive Advertisements and Rewards: Key Formats to Drive Engagement
"Advertising in our free-to-play game is now widely accepted by players. Thanks to our rewarded formats, A controlled distribution context and a high level of advertising attention. These formats allow unlocking an in-game advantage in exchange for viewing or engaging with an advertisement. It's a 15 to 30-second opt-in format, providing a showcase for entertainment advertisers who often have trailers to promote new content. This is a strong awareness lever, but we can go further in terms of engagement with playable formats," explains Jean-Baptiste Godinot, EVP of Gameloft for brands. The publisher dedicates a team of 140 experts to creating branded content, ranging from simple playable advertisements to multi-platform applications. "We capitalize on our publishing experience to offer advertisers game mechanics most suited to their DNA and the targeted audience while ensuring a quality experience for our players, creating engagement to these formats," adds Jean-Baptiste Godinot.
The results are promising, as the "The Marketing ROI in Gaming" white paper by Gameloft for brands, in partnership with Oracle Moat, shows that the formats offered by COMBO! advertising network provides a substantial positive impact for brands, with measured increases in memorization(+16%), brand awareness (+12%), and brand likeability factor (+11%). This is partly due to the rewarded format's ability to make the advertiser an ally of the player, who can benefit from a bonus after watching or interacting with the brand, unlike traditional formats that often disrupt the gaming experience. These ads also stand out for their superior market performance in viewability (98.3% vs. 67% for conventional ads - MOAT in-view rate) and completion rate (92.4% vs. 61.9% average elsewhere). Furthermore, while measuring advertising attention is at the heart of innovations proposed by the digital advertising industry this year, in-game ads generate high attention with engagement rates nearly two times higher than traditional digital ad formats, as demonstrated in the Gameloft for brands study. This unique gaming environment proves advantageous for brands, as a recent IAS and Médiamétrie study estimates a 23% increase in purchase intentions among players exposed to an ad for more than fifteen seconds.
Whether building awareness for a new series or a gaming platform's offerings, engaging fans of a franchise or a sport whose broadcasting rights have been acquired, in-game advertising naturally emerges as an essential lever for entertainment players.
Learn more about COMBO! The Gaming Media Network.
This article was originally published in French at eMarketing.fr
