Marketing To Gamers On Video Game Consoles: Can Brands Play?

Reach­ing con­sumers via video game con­soles is a grow­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. Brands are now in the game via spon­sor­ships, brand­ed apps and games, and ads.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

In the immor­tal words of music indus­try dar­ling Tay­lor Swift, “the play­ers gonna play, play, play, play, play.” She prob­a­bly wasn’t talk­ing about the video game indus­try, but she might has well have been: Video games are huge­ly impor­tant source of enter­tain­ment for men ages 18 to 34. At the same time, video game con­soles have his­tor­i­cal­ly been dif­fi­cult devices on which to reach con­sumers. They will, how­ev­er, become increas­ing­ly impor­tant to adver­tis­ers as they become more func­tion­al and, there­fore, pow­er­ful. But how can brands take advan­tage of this bur­geon­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty?


Eng­lish couch pota­toes, rejoice: Domino’s is report­ed­ly work­ing with Microsoft to enable Xbox One play­ers to order piz­zas from their con­soles.

Per the Sun­day Times, the part­ner­ship is due to be announced in Novem­ber and is “thought to be the first time British con­sumers will be able to buy a phys­i­cal prod­uct via the Xbox.”

Accord­ing to a rep for Domino’s in the U.S., it is a UK-spe­cif­ic effort and he is not aware of any plans for a com­pa­ra­ble deal in the U.S.

Nev­er­the­less, the Domino’s‑Microsoft part­ner­ship is note­wor­thy as an exam­ple of a brand mak­ing itself vis­i­ble to con­sumers on yet anoth­er device.

And, as con­soles become more func­tion­al, they will play increas­ing­ly impor­tant roles in the liv­ing room as sources of enter­tain­ment beyond games. And, as a result, their rel­a­tive impor­tance to mar­keters also increas­es.

There’s a lot of talk that we may not be cable sub­scribers [in the future], but data sub­scribers,” said Bri­an Blau, research direc­tor at research and advi­so­ry firm Gart­ner, point­ing to devices like Ama­zon Fire TV and PlaySta­tion TV.

Despite exist­ing flaws, Blau said these devices will only get bet­ter over time as con­soles turn into “much more pow­er­ful graph­ic com­put­ers.”

Brands & Video Consoles: Who’s Playing?

The Domino’s‑Microsoft pact is cer­tain­ly not the first brand­ed part­ner­ship with­in the gam­ing – or even con­sole – indus­try.

Nis­san and Sony, for exam­ple, have teamed up mul­ti­ple times for Nis­san PlaySta­tion GT Acad­e­my, a gamer-to-pro­fes­sion­al-rac­er com­pe­ti­tion that the brands say uses “the vir­tu­al world of the Gran Tur­is­mo 6 game to unearth real-world rac­ing tal­ent.”

In a sim­i­lar vein, in a tweet in May, Nin­ten­do announced it was work­ing with Mer­cedes-Benz on an inte­gra­tion with­in Mario Kart 8 on Wii U.

Reps for Nis­san, Sony and Nin­ten­do did not respond to requests for com­ment.

Also in May, Microsoft announced a mul­ti-year part­ner­ship with the NFL to give Xbox One users “exclu­sive inter­ac­tive NFL expe­ri­ences,” as well as an ESPN app.

And, of course, there are all those Mad­den games.

Count­less oth­er part­ner­ships exist and it’s no won­der: dri­ven by strong mobile gam­ing and video game con­sole and soft­ware sales, Gart­ner fore­casts the world­wide video game mar­ket­place will reach $111 bil­lion by 2015.

Gamers: A Difficult, But Valuable Audience

While ads have a long his­to­ry in the video game indus­try, con­soles have his­tor­i­cal­ly been one of the most dif­fi­cult plat­forms for adver­tis­ers because “con­soles are real­ly a male-ori­ent­ed prod­uct and tend to skew young to younger mid­dle age,” Blau said. That’s in part because cer­tain game gen­res like shoot­er, rac­ing and sports are pop­u­lar with that demo­graph­ic and “this is a tough audi­ence to reach…and the audi­ence might not be as accept­ing [of ads],” he added.

(In a case study, Think with Google echoes Blau’s state­ment, not­ing, on aver­age, 18- to 34-year-olds spend more time per view in gam­ing than in any oth­er con­tent seg­ment.)

And, much to their wives’/girlfriends’ (or moth­ers’) dis­may, they are a cap­tive audi­ence on these devices, which makes them prime tar­gets for adver­tis­ers.

It’s not like the web,” Blau said. “It’s not like mobile apps [either] where there’s a lot of in and out and back and forth. The ad oppor­tu­ni­ties are lim­it­ed [on con­soles].”

Can Brands Reach Gamers?

So how does a brand reach these cap­tive con­sumers? They have sev­er­al options.

One way brands cur­rent­ly con­nect with con­sumers on con­soles is through sports games in which “big mon­ey is exchanged” for spon­sor­ships. That includes con­tracts with teams, sta­di­ums, adver­tis­ers and the like and heavy inte­gra­tion, Blau said. It’s a sim­i­lar con­cept with rac­ing games that have deals with car man­u­fac­tur­ers.

And then there are brand­ed apps like the upcom­ing offer­ing from Domino’s, as well as brands like Net­flix, YouTube and GoPro.

What’s more, con­soles also have ads with­in their main inter­faces.

And then there are brand­ed games.

But, what­ev­er the strat­e­gy, in order for a brand to suc­cess­ful­ly reach con­sumers on con­soles, the con­tent has to fit with­in the game and it has to res­onate with that audi­ence.

The best advice is that brands real­ly need to find how their cus­tomers cross over with games, and then make sure there is a real­ly sol­id tie-in between the mes­sage and the video game, which could be the game sit­u­a­tion, con­tent or user inter­face,” Blau said. “The tie-in is the most pow­er­ful way to have an impact with game play­ers and if that tie-in is opti­mized it has the best chance of hav­ing mean­ing for the game play­er, ver­sus ad con­tent that is tan­gen­tial­ly relat­ed or not relat­ed at all and then it becomes obvi­ous that the ad is out of place.”

Marketing Challenges: Game Over?

The abil­i­ty of a brand to reach con­sumers on con­soles is fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by com­pet­ing inter­ests among all involved par­ties.

There are four par­ties when it comes to hav­ing suc­cess­ful ads in games: the adver­tis­er, the game devel­op­er, the game play­er and the con­sole mak­er. Every­body has a say so in this and get­ting them all to line up is real­ly dif­fi­cult. It’s a good oppor­tu­ni­ty, but it’s not easy things to get right,” Blau said.

Gamers don’t like ads and devel­op­ers don’t want to show ads because they “want to show their art in its purest form,” and adver­tis­ers want to take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ty that exists with­out upset­ting any­one.

There are a lot of pieces and it’s a com­pli­cat­ed busi­ness,” Blau said. “That’s why it hasn’t real­ly hit its stride. And the same sit­u­a­tion will con­tin­ue for a long time.”

And because of all the exist­ing chal­lenges, Blau said it will only change if brands make a big push.

I think it will hap­pen more because con­sumers are more accept­ing and games are hav­ing their hey­day,” Blau said. “We’re going to see more, but it will be inter­est­ing to watch the devel­op­ment because of the chal­lenges.”

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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