Girls to dominate gaming?
Online games are an equal opportunity pastime. They give women of all ages a chance to get involved, and lately it seems advertisers have been taking notice. A study by a game industry research firm has shown that advertisers have spent close to $150 million on ad buys at casual game sites, or inside the games themselves, in the year 2006. In 2002, they spend $74 million.
Advertisers recognize that the audience for casual online gaming is fast expanding to all genders and ages. Nowadays players tend to spend more time online and less time consuming traditional media. Ignoring this niche leads to missing out on an opportunity to reach target audiences at a time when they are paying the most attention.
Women can’t seem to get enough of mind-bending puzzle and strategy games. The total female online gaming audience grew 27 percent over the previous year to nearly 43 million visitors. The number of female gamers in the 12-24 and 55-64 age groups grew even faster. This fact is indicative of a substantial opportunity for advertisers, who have looked to the gaming industry as mainly the province of young males. The increased interest in online gaming from teenage girls and adult women is convincing marketers to shift a larger percentage of their advertising budgets to the free online gaming space. And it’s not only game distributors doing this; pharmaceutical advertisers now use online game portals as a way to reach female customers as well.
The online gaming industry is fanning the flames by developing gaming content, portals and websites that are geared toward the interests of a female audience. This strategy is a way of making sure the popularity of casual online gaming among women will continue its explosive growth.
Women are also the most dedicated players of casual online games. Adult women are twice as likely as men to spend 20 hours per week playing PC games. Casual online game sites, it can be concluded, are amongst the stickiest sites on the web. An advertiser who can tap into this highly engaged audience has a better chance of having consumers pay attention to their message than other advertising venues, which consumers tend to tune out.
Ad formats in-game can also be quite innovative. Online games offer – in some cases – (and in addition to the traditional banner ads and rich media) in-game advertising, contest sponsorships, and branded ad-games. These formats broaden the advertisers’ brand engagement, and give a more tangible return on investment to advertisers when compared with traditional media buys.
The bottom line on all this is as follows. A fast growing, diverse female audience is looking to casual game sites for a number of reasons. They can, for one thing, connect with like minded people. They can also make new friends and have fun. These sites are sticky, and people tend to come back to them and get to know them quite well. Advertisers and media buyers, therefore, can win big by purchasing space in these online game destinations, and taking advantage of innovations like in-game advertising.
