Marketing reports and market data
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Esports - The Brand Opportunity.
The esports industry represents a significant and rapidly maturing opportunity for brands, provided they approach the space with authenticity and long-term commitment.
- The esports audience reached 433 million viewers by 2019, with an additional 1.7 billion people aware of the sector.
- 60% of the esports fan base falls within the 25 to 39 age demographic, which is characterized by high disposable income and a preference for digital platforms over linear television.
- Brands must prioritize adding value to the fan experience through deep integration—such as custom algorithms or interactive content—rather than relying on superficial logo placement to avoid community backlash.
Superstar Session: How Enthusiast Gaming is Building Winning Esports Communities
Enthusiast Gaming operates as a diversified media and events company with a primary mission to build the world’s largest communities of gamers and esports fans.
- Enthusiast Gaming operates a diversified ecosystem of over 100 websites and 900 YouTube channels, reaching a monthly audience of more than 150 million users.
- The company’s business model relies on corporate sponsorship as its primary revenue driver, necessitated by the current absence of stable, recurring broadcast rights in the esports industry.
- Luminosity Gaming functions as a 'content factory' by managing 50 influencers and five competitive teams to generate consistent engagement across both franchised and grassroots gaming scenes.
Building a Successful Ad Monetisation Strategy: What can Mobile Gaming Learn from Other Verticals?
The mobile gaming industry is undergoing a significant shift in its monetization strategy, moving away from a reliance on in-app purchases toward a more robust, ad-supported model.
- Mobile gaming should shift from a reliance on in-app purchases and performance-based game ads toward brand-centric advertising models used by non-gaming applications.
- Developers can attract premium brand budgets from retail and consumer goods sectors by treating their games as 'shop windows' that offer high-quality, non-intrusive ad placements.
- To appeal to premium advertisers, developers must prioritize brand safety and leverage recognizable intellectual property rather than relying solely on hyper-casual ad models.
How Does Brand Advertising Fit into Your Monetisation Strategy?
Mobile game publishers can significantly enhance their monetization strategies by integrating brand advertising into their existing revenue models.
- Compliance with supply chain transparency standards—specifically app-ads.txt, sellers.json, and the OpenRTB supply chain object—is now a mandatory prerequisite for accessing brand budgets from major buyers like The Trade Desk and Google.
- Only approximately 30% of top-tier mobile apps are currently compliant with industry transparency standards, leaving a significant portion of the market excluded from brand advertising revenue.
- Publishers should move away from global price floors and instead implement regional pricing tiers to effectively capture demand across diverse international markets.
Holistic LTV: A Unified View to Drive Growth & Efficiency
Maximizing user lifetime value (LTV) requires moving beyond fragmented, siloed data to a unified, holistic approach that integrates user acquisition, monetization, and product development.
- Transitioning from siloed metrics like ARPDAU and eCPM to a holistic LTV model is necessary to capture the total revenue generated by a user across their entire lifecycle.
- Fragmented data and reliance on waterfall-based ad reporting obscure true revenue performance, whereas programmatic bidding provides the granular, impression-level data required for accurate LTV calculations.
- Organizational silos between user acquisition, product, and monetization teams often lead to conflicting goals, such as increasing ad load to boost short-term revenue at the expense of long-term retention.
Superstar Session: Build a UA Strategy Around Affinity With Contextual Ad Targeting
The mobile gaming industry is shifting toward contextual ad targeting as a primary strategy for user acquisition (UA), moving away from a reliance on traditional player data and behavior.
- Mobile user acquisition is shifting toward contextual targeting, which uses granular game metadata rather than personal identifiers to reach players based on their affinity for specific mechanics, art styles, and themes.
- This strategy relies on a framework of 52 distinct sub-genres, developed through expert analysis of major gaming markets including the US, Japan, and China.
- Machine learning models process this qualitative data to generate hundreds of specific data points per game, covering player personas, motivations, and core gameplay attributes.
Panel: Maintaining Authenticity: Best Practises to Work with Influencers
This panel discussion from Pocket Gamer Connects London 2020 explores strategies for collaborating with influencers in the gaming industry, focusing on the tension between maintaining brand authenticity and achieving measurable performance goals.
- Prioritize contextual alignment and long-term partnerships over superficial metrics like total follower counts to ensure sustainable influencer marketing success.
- Balance performance-driven user acquisition goals with brand-building strategies by treating influencers as creative partners rather than simple advertising channels.
- Avoid rigid, over-scripted briefs to allow influencers the creative freedom necessary to leverage their personal brand and maintain authenticity with their audience.
Bridging the Gap: Connect With Your Gamers on Social Media
The primary objective of this presentation is to provide game developers and publishers with strategies for effectively engaging global gaming audiences through social media.
- Successful brand integration relies on creative, narrative-driven content rather than traditional, direct-sales advertising to foster organic community interest.
- A February 2019 survey of over 400,000 global gamers identified a strong preference for gaming memes and humorous social content over standard promotional material.
- High-performing campaigns for titles like PUBG Mobile, FIFA, and Kingdom Hearts 3 achieved millions of views by prioritizing creative assets—such as custom makeup or musical performances—over overt sales pitches.
Influencer Marketing in Eastern Europe! A Hidden Gem or a Waste of Money?
Influencer marketing in Eastern Europe presents a distinct, high-potential opportunity for game developers, provided they adapt to the region's unique cultural and economic landscape.
- Influencer-led campaigns in Eastern Europe outperform traditional digital advertising by achieving 15% higher engagement rates than Facebook or Google ads.
- Influencer marketing in the region attracts a younger player demographic, averaging 18 years old compared to the 35-year-old average seen in traditional acquisition channels.
- While the region suffers from lower GDP per capita, it offers a high-value opportunity for long-term user acquisition due to significantly lower costs per install and high player retention.
Fireside Chat: Working with Influencers
This discussion from the January 2020 Pocket Gamer Connects London event explores best practices for influencer marketing within the gaming industry.
- Successful influencer campaigns prioritize authentic collaboration and creative freedom over rigid, transactional scripts to maintain audience trust.
- Brands should treat creators as strategic partners by involving them in the creative process, as they possess the best understanding of their specific community's preferences.
- Data-driven platforms should be used for identifying influencer partners to ensure strategic alignment with brand goals, replacing outdated manual outreach methods.
Superstar Session: Influencer Marketing Sucks (and Some Best Practices)
The influencer marketing landscape for mobile applications is currently plagued by inefficiencies, lack of transparency, and poor scalability.
- Transitioning from flat-fee influencer payments to a performance-based, pay-per-install (CPI) model ensures advertisers only pay for verified user acquisition, guaranteeing positive ROI.
- Traditional influencer marketing suffers from low scalability and inefficiency due to manual outreach, reliance on unreliable vanity metrics, and the prevalence of bot activity.
- Integrating mobile measurement partner (MMP) tracking allows for the automation of influencer campaigns, removing the need for manual negotiation and constant oversight.
Trailers - Sell Your Game
High-end cinematic trailers serve as a critical marketing tool for mobile games, helping titles distinguish themselves in an increasingly saturated marketplace.
- High-end cinematic trailers are now essential for mobile games to compete in a saturated market, closing the production quality gap previously held by PC and console titles.
- Production costs are primarily driven by the complexity of assets, specifically the number of characters, environmental variety, and the requirement for advanced simulations like fluid dynamics, destruction, or hair physics.
- Client-provided assets are often low-poly proxies, requiring studios to perform extensive look development, including re-topology, 8K texturing, and advanced rigging to meet professional standards.