People are spending more time playing video games during lockdown, according to a recent report, providing advertisers with a new opportunity to reach audiences.
The Digital 2020: April Global Statshot Report released by We Are Social and Hootsuite found that weekly downloads of mobile games in March jumped by 30% compared to weekly averages for the final quarter of 2019, with people around the world downloading more than a billion games each week.
In total, mobile users downloaded more than 13 billion games during the first three months of the year, spending close to US$17 billion on mobile games and in-game purchases, a 5% increase on spend compared to the last three months of 2019.
While the sector has benefited from lockdown measures, data from GlobalWebIndex shows that even before lockdowns four in five of the world’s internet users already played video games.
Lance Traore, AdColony Australia and New Zealand country manager, says the category has been overlooked by advertisers but he’s noticed more interest in it in the past few weeks.
“It’s still a severely underutilised and cost-effective channel to advertise in,” Traore tells AdNews.
“With the challenges we have now, it’s going to probably drive innovation.
“When everything is good and everybody has money, you stick and do what you did before. But I think a lot of advertisers are going to come out of this with less budget to deliver the same result. That's going to drive innovation within the space, and gaming is probably one of the areas that will benefit from that.”
The age of people turning to games is broad, with GlobalWebIndex finding that more than a third of internet users between 16-64 years old are spending more time playing video games in recent weeks. Another report by telco AT&T shows gaming-related traffic in April was up 50% compared to pre-lockdown levels.
Esports has also been given a boost, with GlobalWebIndex’s research finding that 10% of internet users around the world have been spending more time watching esports.
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