Rupert Pay.
The biggest surprise for Rupert Pay since he came on as gaming advertising platform iion’s new head of APAC ad sales in August has been that more agencies aren’t adding gaming to their media plan.
After spending his first few months talking to media agencies, he’s found some are “really leaning into” the space but others are showing little interest – something that came as a “genuine surprise” given that seven out of 10 Australian advertisers intended to increase activity in gaming advertising this year.
“We've had lot of great conversations with both holding companies and indies so far and it's driven by the fact there are huge numbers of people gaming - 81% of Australians playing 90 minutes a day,” he said.
“That's a huge audience and it's something that everybody knows they need to be looking at, so I think the appetite should be bigger and there should be a game advertising strategy in every client's plan.”
Part of that comes down to a number of pain points within the channel, Pay believes, with one of them being that the companies that operate in the game advertising world are not traditional media owners.
“When you break from convention, people find it harder to understand,” he told AdNews.
“We don't see ourselves as a media owner; I almost think we're an audience owner. The reality of that is that you can't be a media owner when you represent an ecosystem that is so massively fragmented with regards to inventory, so for us, we see ourselves more as a gateway to a huge audience.
“Complexity, lack of simplicity and audience validation are all challenges [that game advertising] has to overcome, because you're looking at multiple devices.”
There are positive signs on the horizon, though – Pay said that iion is seeing a “really good appetite” from the likes of GroupM’s Wavemaker and Publicis’ Starcom, as well as interest at Carat alongside conversations being had with PHD around attention metrics.
The global market for video game revenue reached US$196 billion in 2023, more than the combined revenue from streaming video ($114 billion), streaming music ($38 billion), and global box-office receipts ($34 billion), according to Bain’s 2024 Gamer Survey.
Bain also revealed that over half (52%) of those surveyed - more than 5,000 people across six countries - played video games on a regular basis, with 80% of the youngest players (2 to 18 years old) spending nearly 30% of their entertainment time in video game environments.
Pay - who’s based in Sydney and previously held APAC leadership positions at the likes of Blis and Bonzai, as well as time spent at InMobi and Joy - said a trend he’s noticed in his first few months in the industry is the degree of content loyalty that gamers have to their preferred medium.
“If you look at something like Roblox, over 40% of their audience now is over the age of 17. A lot of these people have grown up with Roblox, but they never actually left it,” he said.
“For brands, the holy grail is increasing your customer lifetime value, so if you can align to an audience that stays loyal to that, it's a really good opportunity to build a brand.”
That loyalty is also reflected in M&C Saatchi’s recent Passion Pulse ’24 report, which found that gaming topped the list as the biggest ‘passion’ among all Australians surveyed – ahead of activities like the AFL, cooking, pets, caring for family members and travel.
Pay said that the job now for iion – and other game advertising platforms – is in educating the market.
“You're buying an audience around a passion point and that's a bit of a shift from being a traditional media owner or an ad tech vendor,” he told AdNews.
“I come from an agency background. People need to see efficacy, measurement and validity. There is generally an appetite for testing and learning, but in times of economic uncertainty, people tend to stick to what they know.
“We make a point of setting our benchmarks for what I would call hygiene metrics really high - whether it's video completion rates or audio completion rates – and at the moment, we have to prove that efficacy against other channels that are getting digital spend.”
This reflects a similar sentiment to one he unveiled at this year’s IAB Gaming Summit, where Pay said he would welcome the opportunity to run a head-to-head comparison on impressions for those in media agencies in order to see how gaming stacks up against some of the other digital channels.
“I think it's too easy for buyers to just put money into the same thing. Gaming advertising feels like it’s last thing on the plan, first thing off the plan - that's what we need to change,” Pay said in his presentation.
Pay said that given what he deems as the under-utilisation of the channel, there's an “amazing opportunity” for media agencies to get in early when point of entry is still relatively cheap.
“We face short termism in a number of areas in our industry and a lot of that is coming from CMOs on short tenures who are looking to get results,” he said.
“There's been plenty of studies written about the importance of readdressing that balance and building brands and it's no surprise that the brands that are resonating more with younger demos are challenger brands, because they have to do more interesting things creatively to stand out.
“[Telstra CMO] Brent Smart talks about the importance of creative and creating memorable work all the time and if you create memorable work, you actually don't need to spend as much on media, because it's just more effective.”
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.