There’s more to lockdown than watching more TV
Partner content
MiQ’s Freddie Turner looks at how Covid-19 is changing UK gaming habits – from who’s playing to how much, and where they’re consuming content outside of the games themselves
Social distancing and the COVID-19 enforced lockdown has changed digital consumption habits in all sorts of ways. We’ve seen noticeable – and unsurprising – spikes in viewership for video, audio, and TV (both linear and connected).
But the trend goes beyond just using screens to passively watch content. During lockdown, we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of people gaming – on the more traditional computers and consoles, but also via mobile devices and other online channels. The average number of daily sessions people are playing has doubled from two to four, and interest in gaming has increased 147% across the UK.
This is a trend that marketers need to play close attention to. Gaming is one of the newest addressable programmatic channels – and can provide key insights into your audience that inform the rest of your media buying.
Who’s gaming?
When it comes to gaming, our research shows there are three major audiences: Hardcore gamers, PC warriors, and casuals. Here’s what they look like:
Hardcore gamers
Over two thirds of this audience (68%) are millennials, and are as twice as likely to be male as female. They’re the most likely of the three groups to play across different platforms (though consoles are their preferred device) and, while they account for only 3.2% of the entire gaming community, they account for 13% of all gaming sessions.
In an average week, a hardcore gamer will return to a gaming domain about six times and spend four hours playing.
PC warriors
PC warriors are slightly older, with most of the audience coming from the 24-44 age group. They’re an equal mix of women and men.
This audience plays games mostly using PCs (obviously) and have around three to four gaming sessions a week. They make up a third of the gaming audience, and have the highest spending potential, as suggested by their other typical domain activity: finance, arts and entertainment.
Casual gamers
This is the largest gaming audience (68% of all gamers captured) and the segment is evenly distributed across the entire set of demographics with no major disparities in terms of age or gender.
As you’d expect, it’s a pretty erratic segment, with players consuming different types of games across lots of different categories. They tune in to an average of 1.3 sessions a week, and almost three-quarters of them (72%) engage in less than one hour of gaming everyday.
It’s not just playing
People aren’t just playing more games, they’re also consuming more gaming-related content online. Over the last few years, watching live or recorded streams of games being played has skyrocketed in popularity and stream views have also increased.
YouTube Gaming has grown 14% during the course of the lockdown, and Twitch and Mixer have also seen gains. On the whole, the audience for streaming/watching gameplays has increased by 8% since the start of the lockdown, and average viewing times have increased by 14%.
And, while streaming gameplays is still a young person’s activity (the 18 to 34 age group accounts for 72% of the audience), in the first month of isolation there was a 13% increase in the number of people over 35 watching streams.
The advertising opportunity
During lockdown, the largest gaming growth has been for online web-based gaming (a 63% increase in interest), whereas in-app gaming has seen a 36% fall. This suggests consumers are spending more time in front of PCs and laptops, and shifting to ad-supported experiences on those, rather than their mobile devices which are more suited to commutes that are no longer happening.
This shift has meant advertisers have more opportunity than ever, with programmatic advertising, to optimise their targeting strategies to reach audiences across a range of gaming content. This can happen before a campaign even starts, with insights that allow you to understand your audience’s behaviour and consumption habits before you serve your first ad. And it extends throughout a campaign, as you can apply sophisticated data strategies to target messaging to the specific audience, in the specific environment, with the exact format.
These data strategies are what make programmatic advertising so unique. Understanding your audience and the content they are consuming, in that split second before your ad is served, allows you to make a decision: is this a new customer that needs a branding message in a high impact format? Or is this a customer who knows your brand inside and out, so serving them much more product focused creative is far more valuable.
There has never been a better opportunity for advertisers to experiment and learn in this programmatic channel. Right now, when audiences are captive and spending time playing games in addressable environments, is a great opportunity to learn more about your audience, using keyword and sentiment analysis and discovering deeper contextual insights to serve the right message in the right place, at the right time.
Freddie Turner, director of strategy, UK at MiQ
For more information on UK Gaming habits in response to the current climate, take a look at the full insights here.