Why are some brands still so hesitant to delve into the world of advertising within gaming?

Gaming accounts for just 1-2% of overall UK advertising spend, though investment is increasing, forecasted to reach £1.8bn in 2026. Only now is the advertising industry starting to take notice of the opportunities that gaming as a media channel can provide to brands.

Over the past few years, we have seen consumers diversify their time across a number of apps and channels. Brands can’t be reliant on running the majority of media spend within a single channel anymore. To be front of mind, you need to diversify your message across a greater media mix of platforms that work together to move your audience down the funnel, from awareness and attention to conversion. Gaming is a high-attention channel, great at driving awareness and mid-funnel activity that fuels conversion activity.

However, to put it bluntly, a lack of understanding is holding many brands back from taking advantage of the opportunities that gaming provides. Slowly, outdated stereotypes that see the gaming audience as a homogenous group of teenage boys in their bedroom are being put to one side. A surge in online gaming over the past 10 years has largely been driven by an increase in gaming across mobile and tablet devices. It’s estimated that 70-75% of the UK population can now be classed as a ‘gamer’. The average age of gamers has also increased, with the dominant age group in the UK now those aged 30-39. This is down to both an increase in gaming during COVID-19 as well as older individuals who played video games during their childhood in the 90’s, continuing to play them as they grow older. Finally, while historically gaming skewed towards a male audience, today gamers are more evenly balanced reaching close to a 50/50 split between men and women.

If we look back a few years, there was a similar hesitancy with brands launching on TikTok as we have seen with gaming. This is a common reaction to the emergence of new channels, especially when they’re tied to brand safety concerns. But, as with TikTok, the gaming space has developed to ensure key brand safety measures are in place. There’s a process of test and learn both in how the media is bought and how creative is best used to understand what strategy will deliver the greatest success. A hesitancy to undertake a period of test and learn can also act as initial blocker, but the sooner we test the sooner we can grow and strengthen performance.

Measurement and a holistic view of success

Sometimes brands get too bogged down in being super-efficient, losing sight of the importance of incremental growth. They can be too quick to write off a channel after a single test because it didn’t immediately result in strong, attributed direct conversions.

However, we know that no media works in isolation. No consumer sees a single ad and then converts immediately. Each channel is part of a wider mix working together to build frequency, covering multiple audience touchpoints and cutting through the advertising noise that consumers absorb each day.

Whilst we can incorporate tracking to show the short-term results gained from incorporating gaming into your campaigns, it’s important to look at the wider picture and understand how diversifying your media mix and creating opportunities for incremental growth have impacted the bottom line.

Brands must stop viewing gaming as a bolt on to their main campaigns

Gaming has achieved mass reach. Brands need to stop viewing it as a ‘nice to have’ or bolt on to their main campaigns. Instead, they need start including gaming in an integrated media plan from the start. While overall media spend in gaming is still small and audience growth hasn’t yet been matched with media investment, there’s a real opportunity here!

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