Mobile gaming is no longer a hobby, but a mainstream form of media. With over 3.3 billion mobile gamers worldwide (Statista, 2024), advertisers are sitting on an incredibly engaged and under-utilized audience in digital media. Advertisers can turn gamers into target consumers with just one glance at their mobile devices, and what makes in-game advertising so powerful is not only reach, but mindshare as well, which they do not just consume passively, but they are so immersed and engaged they have an emotional connection to the content and the businesses sponsoring it and they want and desire to engage with it.
The opportunity is not new. What we can ascertain now is we know what does work and where brands are still struggling to get it right.
The Attention is Real, And So Is the Time Spent
Mobile gamers are engaged and connected—think about it. Users are not mindlessly scrolling past another display banner ad or skipping by another story; mobile gamers are focused and involved in an experience. As per Data.ai’s (2024 State of Mobile) report, users spend a whopping 1.2 trillion hours globally on mobile games annually—this is more hours than they spend consumed with streaming platforms or music apps.
But attention does not always promise performance, what makes mobile gaming unique, is the opt-in behavior tied to the action. Reward video ads—where users identify their intention to watch for the exchange of enchanted in-game currency—have completion rates greater than 80% and that is much higher than standard video placements across the open web (ironSource, 2023) which naturally separates the experiences.
It’s More Than Just a Branding Channel
In-game ads are seen as upper-funnel branded sight, and that’s really old thinking. We’ve had brands that are direct-to-consumer (DTC), financial apps, and even edtech brands see solid post-click metrics from fairly placed rewarded or interactive ads in mid-core and casual games. Why? Because the user is not distracted and is paying attention. And when the call to action fits the moment, the conversion does not feel like interruption, it feels like utility.
Sure, the format of the ad is more important than the gaming genre. If that’s not true, then why invest in branded ads? A 15-second skippable ad in context with a game matched CTA is leaps better than any kind of static experience, especially while user acquisition costs have gone up in regions that have seen cost shifts on traditional channels due to privacy updates.
Context Over Cookies: A Strategic Shift
With signal loss increasingly becoming a way of life, thanks to IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) depreciation and cookie expiration, advertisers must find smarter methods to infer intent. Mobile gaming represents a new way to target: by contextualized engagement. You might not know who the user is, but you usually know what they are doing, how long they are doing it, and how meaningfully they engage with choice-based activities.
Instead of demographic targeting, visionary marketers are creating creatives around the engagement opportunity, such as completing a level, or earning an in-game reward, etc. It’s no longer just reaching the gamer but more importantly, reaching the gamer when it matters.
Don’t Just Sell – Add Value
The in-game campaigns with the best track record of performance are not social or display campaigns. Good in-game advertising is a context that is native to itself. Think of your ad as a power-up, not a pop-up. When brands stop trying to replicate existing media playbooks and start thinking from a gaming perspective, that’s when you get the performance.
For advertisers who are serious about future-proofing their media mix, mobile gaming is not a trend. It is a frontier, and it is already monetizing attention better than most.
Authored by Kumar Saurav, Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer, AdCountyMedia)
