Gaming’s promoting paradox sees marketer underinvest amid huge attain

Video video games have taken an outsized place within the world media panorama, however many advertisers nonetheless wrestle with profitable paths to attach with gamers.

• There are at the moment 3.4 billion recreation gamers worldwide and time spent in video games is up 6% YoY, nonetheless video games obtain lower than 5% of media funding, in response to Dentsu’s 2025 Gaming Trends Report.

During Advertising Week New York’s first-ever Gaming Summit final week, a panel of gaming business leaders shared insights on how manufacturers can higher navigate the gaming ecosystem.

Gaming’s attain vs. funding hole

“Gaming is honestly kind of like the industry’s worst kept secret,” mentioned Paul Mascali, advertising director and head of leisure, gaming, and creators at PepsiCo. “Everyone in the industry knows how big and how important gaming is. Everyone’s seen the flashy numbers. The problem is just a lack of education and the industry being as fragmented as it is.”

This fragmentation creates confusion for manufacturers about the place to take a position their advertising {dollars} successfully, with Mascali noting there’s “a fair amount of snake oil out there” from distributors who might not present real worth.

Beyond schooling gaps, operational challenges contribute considerably to gaming’s underinvestment downside. Brent Koning, head of gaming at Dentsu, defined that gaming initiatives are sometimes first on the chopping block when budgets tighten.

“You’ve got CMOs who at the start of the year in the budgeting process are like, ‘What are we going to do? It’s gaming.’ And then when budget issues hit, everyone goes, ‘Quick, what are we going to cut? It’s gaming,'” he mentioned.

The answer, in response to Koning, is integrating gaming methods instantly into the advertising combine quite than treating them as separate innovation initiatives. This method makes gaming investments tougher to chop and extra prone to obtain constant assist.

Gaming as Gen Z’s social ecosystem

For Gen Z particularly, gaming serves as a novel social expertise, with the youthful technology 32% extra seemingly than common gamers to play with a purpose to hang around with associates, as famous in Dentsu’s report.

Meena Mutha, director of gross sales at Discord, mentioned that entrepreneurs want to acknowledge that “gamers don’t just game,” they have interaction in broader social actions and neighborhood constructing.

“At our core, Discord is a voice, video, and chat platform, but 90% of our users actually game,” mentioned Mutha. “They’re coming to Discord to game, but they’re really coming there also to form communities, to communicate with their friends and form connections.”

This social dimension creates alternatives for manufacturers to have interaction with gaming audiences past simply the gaming content material itself.

While gaming is usually perceived as a closed ecosystem troublesome for advertisers to penetrate, the panel challenged this notion.

“Discord was not [built as an advertising platform first],” mentioned Koning. “This is a platform that is gamers by gamers for gamers, and there is no wall and there’s no guard.”

Mutha added that avid gamers are “hungry for discovery” and continually in search of new content material to debate with their communities. This openness creates alternatives for manufacturers that may present worth to those communities.

Non-endemic manufacturers discovering in-game success

Rather than having a standalone “gaming strategy,” Mascali defined that PepsiCo develops model methods that leverage gaming to ship on broader targets.

“We have certain tools and approaches of how we integrate within the gaming space to make sure we’re offering and delivering on those brand objectives: Authenticity, adding value to the experience, and testing and learning,” mentioned Mascali.

He shared a profitable case examine the place Mountain Dew partnered with Discord and World of Warcraft, changing into the primary non-endemic model to make use of Discord’s “Quests” feature. World of Warcraft gamers who took half obtained free in-game skins through Discord as rewards.

“The results were awesome,” mentioned Mascali. “We saw a 16% lift in brand favorability, tons of engagement. We saw massive spikes in people playing World of Warcraft on Discord.”

Gaming’s variety presents scaling challenges for advertisers, requiring a number of buys throughout platforms, video games, and publishers. Mutha mentioned Discord has addressed this by growing merchandise that assist manufacturers attain avid gamers at scale throughout its 200 million month-to-month world lively customers.

“As a brand, you can sponsor a user playing a game,” she mentioned. “What better way to get a user to feel really good about your brand, have positive brand affinity, and also get a reward?”