For Retail Media in Gaming, It’s a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure,’ Says Omnicom’s Owen – Beet.TV

The promoting world is obsessive about capturing fleeting client consideration throughout a large number of distraction-laden screens. But one setting, greater than most, boasts undivided focus.

Unlike passive tv viewing or social media scrolling, which are sometimes accompanied by a second display screen, gaming calls for a participant’s full focus.

This is the chance for retail media, a market which Forrester projects will develop to $312 billion globally by 2030, based on Amie Owen, chief commerce officer, Omnicom Media.

Beyond the advertising and marketing funnel

“We want to be where our consumer is, where our audience is, and so it makes sense that we should actually be looking into this channel to make sure that we’re not only driving attention for our brands, but also driving the sale,” she mentioned on this video interview with Beet.TV.

“I would say gaming can apply to every single piece of the funnel depending on what you’re talking about, but I’ll call it the audience journey instead of the funnel,” she added. “Because you could build awareness, you could actually drive the consideration and engagement and then actually at the end of the day, you could drive a sale.”

The effectiveness of the channel, she argued, stems from its means to command singular focus. “They’re staring at a screen for several hours at a time. Gaming is also different than streaming or watching TV or whatever it may be because you’re not really on a second screen, you’re watching that one screen,” Owen mentioned.

Coining contextual commerce

Owen believes the following evolution in gaming-driven retail media shall be a return to a foundational advertising and marketing precept: context. As manufacturers search to attach with customers authentically, merely reaching the appropriate viewers is now not sufficient; the message and the product should additionally really feel native to the setting.

“I want to coin ‘contextual commerce’, because being at the right place at the right time is interesting, but then also embedding what you’re trying to do in an environment at the right place at the right time is honestly contextual,” Owen mentioned. This marks a not simply audience-based concentrating on however a extra holistic view that considers the consumer’s rapid expertise.

This deal with relevance might assist shut the hole between client time spent in gaming and the promoting {dollars} allotted to it. While U.S. recreation promoting income is rising, its share of complete digital advert spending is projected to decline by 2029, suggesting a big untapped alternative for manufacturers that get the context proper.

“Gaming will just be one of them of just any sort of contextual placements where products make sense within the games that people are playing,” Owen mentioned. “So then their interest peaks and hopefully drive a sale.”

You’re watching “Where Play Meets Purchase: Gaming as the Next Frontier of Retail Media, a Beet.TV Leadership Series at CES 2026, presented by Best Buy Ads” For extra movies from this collection, please go to this web page.