Mail Gaming one year on: ‘The social-first strategy has worked’

One year since the Daily Mail launched social-first gaming vertical Mail Gaming, its total social footprint exceeds half a million followers, driven primarily by TikTok.
“It’s been a very exciting 12 months and a very surprising 12 months,” Tracy Middleton, Mail Metro Media’s head of media and entertainment, told The Media Leader.
She declared: “The social-first strategy has worked.”
The @dailymailgaming account on TikTok has over 450,100 followers and 495m video views at the time of publication, according to stats seen by The Media Leader. It should be noted that TikTok counts any video impression as a “view”.
The Mail‘s gaming accounts are substantially smaller on other video platforms; on Instagram, Daily Mail Gaming has over 26,300 followers and on YouTube it has over 28,300, although both are viewed as potential growth areas.
Driving the gaming vertical is a team of one: Mourad El-Dine Abdou was hired in January 2024 to produce all content across Mail Gaming’s social channels, but he has received support from Mail Metro Media’s wider social team under head of social video Phil Harvey.
“He’s very much carved out a lot of the space single-handedly, and with the full backing and support of us as a team,” said Middleton. That said, she hinted that more support could be on the way as the vertical expands and content output increases across more channels and longer-form formats.
Last week, DMG Media moved to finalise a merger between the digital and print editorial and commercial teams across the Daily Mail and MailOnline. While double-digit job losses are expected, the broader strategy is to increase focus on digital outputs, including the brand’s subscription offer, Mail+, and social-first efforts such as Mail Gaming.
Mail Metro Media strives to be ‘early adopter’ as it develops gaming strategy
Attracting gaming brands
Editorially, El-Dine Abdou’s approach has found there is no “one-size-fits-all” strategy for what resonates with audiences. Videos that tend to have high engagement include exclusive access to industry events like Gamescom to film game previews, as well as unboxing videos of gaming kit.
Gameplay videos often perform well, too, albeit less consistently, according to Middleton. Gameplay videos of third-person shooter Helldivers 2 were particular standouts throughout 2024.
When asked why the Mail was using social media account following numbers and views as key performance indicators for the initiative, Middleton explained that the goal during the first year of establishing the vertical was to “see if there was an appetite for the content and to benchmark ourselves against competitors”.
She noted that there are some “very strong gaming publishers” in the market, with news brands like the Mirror and LadBible’s GamingBible approaching a comparable group of consumers.
Referring to El-Dine Abdou’s appointment, Middleton added: “I was very confident that we’d done the right thing in hiring some authentic gaming talent from outside the business to come and push that production from an editorial point of view and someone that understood the commercial capacity that was needed.”
@dailymailgaming Well that’s unfortunate… 🎥: u/Hazerel #helldivers #helldivers2 #ps5 #playstation #playstation5 #pcgaming #pc #funny #funnygamingmoments
Commercially, the Mail has used the gaming vertical to ink deals with new advertisers, namely three endemic gaming brands: Nvidia, Activision and Supercell.
Middleton said this was unexpected; she had anticipated existing, non-gaming Mail advertisers to use the vertical to appeal to the Mail’s large and growing audience of gamers. Instead, it was the gaming brands that leaned in most aggressively.
“I think by attracting three endemic gaming brands, it showcases how well the content has been resonating with the audience and that we are setting our stall out to be a place where brands come for a gaming audience,” she noted.
“I think it was the surprise and delight that a new publisher was in the gaming space, providing gaming content with a different, diversified audience, that we managed to gain their attention instead.”
Notably, both Activision and Supercell also partnered across Mail Metro Media’s digital and print products, suggesting the gaming investment is bringing in new clients that are willing to spend on more than social-branded content.
The editorial overlap between gaming and other Mail verticals has also proven useful, according to Middleton, particularly with sport to tap into esports coverage.
“[IP] so easily crosses from entertainment into gaming,” she explained. “And we write stories in all of those spaces constantly, so I think that crossover, and seeing the internal production and social teams work together, has been really exciting.”
Long-form video and female audience acquisition
On the docket for 2025 is driving stronger growth in Mail Gaming’s female audience, which was a key focus area when Mail Metro Media officially launched a commercial proposition for the vertical in May 2024.
At the time, Middleton told The Media Leader that more than half of its gaming audience on MailOnline and Metro was female and that there were considerable crossover opportunities between gaming and other verticals like fashion, beauty, celebrities and influencers.
“Female gamers are not celebrated as much as they should be within other gaming content,” Middleton said at the time, suggesting there was a gap in the market.
Nearly a year later and she implied such audiences are still under-tapped and that addressing female audiences more directly is “on the plan” for 2025.
“I think there are still ways in which we need to and can approach a female audience in a different way,” she added.
Among other developments for the year ahead, Middleton also revealed the vertical is now testing “slightly longer-form” video content on YouTube — videos between seven and 10 minutes — rather than the short-form content that has thus far been pushed. This would allow the Mail to build out more of an audience on YouTube and show bigger gameplay moments.
Mail Gaming has also been testing live-streaming on TikTok and Middleton said she “would like to do more of that” in 2025 — something that may require external investment.
It should be a year worth capitalising on. Apart from the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI (expected to be released later in the year), another major title worth watching is Assassin’s Creed Shadows (20 March).
The release of the Nintendo Switch 2, expected later this year, is also likely to provide a boost in interest among general consumers, as is the film crossover of Minecraft, A Minecraft Movie (4 April).
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