The dramatic growth of technology has many positive effects on the gaming industry. From 2019 to 2020, the field saw over a 45% increase in game installations, blooming into a $120B industry. As a result, gaming advertising has become much more sophisticated over the years, proving to be one of the most effective revenue channels today.
In-game advertising sells ad space within games as a monetization strategy. These ads can be integrated into the game in many formats: rewards, video ads, or banner ads at the bottom of the game screen.
However, today’s ads totally differ from traditional ads. As Web3 comes into fruition, gaming advertising is going to be unlike anything we have ever imagined.
New Opportunities When Entering the Metaverse
Web3 and the Metaverse give consumers a whole new way to entertain and interact. Every important part of our lives in Metaverse will become ‘smart’ and digital.
This is a place where ‘consumers’ are ‘players’. They can hang out, play games, buy land, earn digital items and collectibles, buy stuff, lend money, earn money and make friends all over the world.
We can see World of Warcraft and Habbo Hotel as the first glimpses of what Metaverse could be. These examples show how incredible in-game advertising possibilities Metaverse will present. And as gaming innovation and technology become more refined, brands and agencies need to rethink their approach to in-game advertising.
New Challenges for Advertisers
Advertisers know that there is a huge opportunity in getting more gaming audiences. But gaming is a complex, fragmented ecosystem, especially gaming on Metaverse. Users pick and choose their favored environments, and advertisers will need to follow that and measure campaigns in those spaces.
When it comes to measuring gaming, there is a lot to make advertisers satisfied, including access to a relevant, trackable, verifiable, and valuable audience. By grasping so many distinct gaming subcultures, it’s possible to reach extremely narrow and wide audiences at the same time.
The challenge here is how to utilize those data to make an efficient advertising campaign. It’s not enough to simply take an existing old-school metrics and shoehorn it into the game.
Advertisers must go further. They need to automate all types of advertisements, not simply interstitials and rewarded videos. Creativity is required to deal with two things at once, capturing attention while not detracting from the gamer’s experience. They also need to improve the ability to measure, verify and predict the quality and performance of media investments.
What to expect in 2022?
According to a report from eMarketer, consumers spent 9 billion hours in Q2 2021 watching live-streamed video game content around the world, excluding China. This is a significant increase from 3.8 billion hours in Q2 2019. The new high follows a 56.9% quarter-over-quarter jump in Q2 2020. This number is expected to rise rapidly in 2022 with the expansion of Metaverse and virtual reality.
As spending on gaming goes up, advertisers will demand better measurement. Third-party verification providers, inventory holders, and buying platforms will also need to bring new measurement solutions to the category.
In 2022, we will see large-scale brand advertisers making gaming advertising a more standard part of their media buys. At the same time, publishers will make gaming inventory easier to buy. As this happens, advertisers can easily join many kinds of gaming together and align them to broader campaign goals.