23 MEDIA talk | FLEXIBLE, VERSATILE, RESILIENT
In addition to this, the gaming environment uniquely lends itself to collaboration with other media. For example, Sony has put together a team in order to explore the development of an immersive environment bringing together music and gaming. There are almost unparalleled opportunities and with an increasingly social and uniquely engaged audience, gaming is an expanding realm for advertising. Brands such as Nike may have already revealed some of the potential in the collaboration with games. In preparation for this year’s SuperBowl, Nike, the official NFL outfitter, and EA Sports released an exclusive trainer and hoodie available to the Madden NFL 19 gaming community. Beyond the development of collaborative products, advertisers need to look into the vast possibilities that exist in transferring messaging from real to virtual worlds.
The industry has also seen a variety of changes to the delivery as well. Improvements to handsets and bandwidth mean that almost half of global gaming revenues are now coming from mobile. Augmenting markets for subscription- based and free-to-play options, even some blockbuster titles have seen mobile-targeted releases to complement console or computer sales. According to data from Streamlabs, streaming platforms like Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and Facebook Gaming saw an almost 20% increase in usage hours during lockdown. Taking the aforementioned trend towards branded content as an example, brands and advertisers can never be sure that a TV show’s audience will not be distracted by other tasks such that they are able to pick up on passing references made within the program. With video games, on the other hand, there is a much higher level of attention as gamers attend to the details in order to pass needed objectives or explore vast, intricate virtual environments.
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