The Media­Brix Social and Mobile Gam­ing Report has revealed that lev­els of engage­ment while users are gam­ing is strong­ly cor­re­lat­ed with the lev­el of emo­tion they are expe­ri­enc­ing.

Fueled by the pop­u­lar­i­ty and preva­lence of smart­phones in the dai­ly lives of con­sumers, mobile gam­ing is a huge, and still grow­ing phe­nom­e­non. Accord­ing to Mobile Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (MMA) data, there are 1.6 bil­lion desk­top and note­book PC gamers, and as many as 700 mil­lion mobile gamers around the world. It rep­re­sents a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty for brand mar­keters to share con­tent that dri­ves engage­ment with con­sumers. The bian­nu­al Media­Brix Social and Mobile Gam­ing Report has ana­lyzed gam­ing data from the first and sec­ond quar­ters of 2014, pin­point­ing key trends and con­sumer behav­ior habits. Aver­ag­ing data from more than 200 social and mobile gam­ing adver­tis­ing cam­paigns, and more than 1 bil­lion impres­sions, the study revealed a com­pelling rela­tion­ship between con­sumer emo­tions and the pro­cliv­i­ty to engage. Terming moments of adver­tis­ing inter­ac­tions as “break through moments” (BTMs), the Media­Brix study found that the more intense the emo­tion, the high­er the adver­tis­ing per­for­mance was for brands.

Key Statistics

Close­ly con­nect­ed to the gamer’s state of emo­tion and game­play, Media­Brix found that engage­ment rates var­ied depend­ing on the emo­tion itself

• Encour­age: BTMs had an aver­age engage­ment rate of 17.0 per­cent
• Reward: BTMs had an aver­age engage­ment rate of 73.6 per­cent
• Res­cue: BTMs had an aver­age engage­ment rate of 86.9 per­cent

Emotional Targeting

The sug­ges­tion for brand adver­tis­ers uti­liz­ing gam­ing plat­forms, is to con­sid­er emo­tion­al tar­get­ing to reach play­ers as they expe­ri­ence emo­tions induced to key moments in the gam­ing expe­ri­ence. The high­est lev­el of engage­ment takes place at res­cue moments, in a sce­nario for exam­ple, when a play­er is stuck on a lev­el with no more lives and needs assis­tance to progress. A typ­i­cal res­cue BTM may offer play­ers a chance to advance in exchange for watch­ing brand’s mes­sage through an in-game adver­tise­ment. Ari Brandt, CEO and co-founder of Media­Brix gave the fol­low­ing com­ment in the report:

“Believe it or not, dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing does­n’t have to dis­rupt or annoy peo­ple. It can be thought­ful and even human­ize brands in users’ eyes. The key is under­stand­ing and acknowl­edg­ing the state of mind of that user, then being respect­ful with your pro­posed inter­ac­tion. Brands reach­ing play­ers dur­ing emo­tion­al moments aligned to res­cue, reward and encour­age can for­ti­fy the user expe­ri­ence. Plus, this puts brands in a posi­tion to make true emo­tion­al con­nec­tions with play­ers, all the while dri­ving the high­est returns and brand per­for­mance met­rics of any dig­i­tal ad for­mats avail­able today.”

Driving Engagement With Immersive Marketing

It’s a les­son that can apply to wider con­tent mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives. With video and inter­ac­tive con­tent, con­tent mar­ket­ing is becom­ing more immer­sive, and brands such as Mon­ey­Su­per­Mar­ket are begin­ning to uti­lize social gam­ing to spear­head cam­paigns. As mar­ket­ing becomes more immer­sive, we may begin to hear an increase in the use of emo­tion­al tar­get­ing to dri­ve user engage­ment, and con­ver­sion rates.