The good news, according to a Singular report, is that top gaming companies can still pull on average 28 or more advertising partners a month
Rain Boots, Turning Tides, and the Search for a Missing Boy
Last year in Nova Scotia, after 3-year-old Dylan Ehler vanished, online sleuths descended on Facebook groups to help find him. Then they lost their way.
Moldy Whopper Sequel: Burger King Bans 120 Artificial Ingredients
In a world where every brand aims to be true and real–or, in marketing speak, authentic–Burger King is going beyond its recent efforts to position itself as a sustainable quick service restaurant by banning 120 “nonessential, artificial ingredients” from its menu. The changes, announced today, are not happening all at once. Burger King has slowly…
What Chief Diversity Officers at Some of the Biggest Agencies Are Doing to Drive Inclusion
The advertising agency world has strived–to some extent–to develop its image by improving the makeup of its teams, which often looks like introducing a chief diversity officer role. These individuals are each charged with driving change within their businesses away from the pale, male and stale view that remains around many industry leaders. Some have…
Costa Coffee Fakes it With Gordon Ramsay Lookalike’s Vegan Bacon Bap Review
To promote its newly introduced plant-based Bac’n Bap offer, coffee chain Costa Coffee has turned to celebrity chef Gordon’s Ramsay’s lookalike as it celebrates the art of imitation. The fake cooking demonstration of the vegan bap, as presented by Martin Jordan doing a perfect imitation of the foul-mouthed Scottish chef from Hell’s Kitchen, began to…
Why Fragmented Identity Is The Root Of All Problems In CTV
“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is by David Levy, CEO at OpenAP. The pandemic boom in streaming TV drove a massive investment in programming. US production companies produced 537 shows last year, up from just 381 the year before – despite the… Continue reading »
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Warby Parker And AllBirds Prep IPOs; Pokémon Pursues Co-Marketing Deals
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Disrupting Who? Warby Parker and Allbirds, two DTC standouts, filed their pre-IPO S-1s last week. It was a reminder of the challenges facing digitally native vertical brands (DNVBs). Each company had its best sales year in 2020, with strong growth rates and retail businesses.… Continue reading »
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In Asia and beyond, mobile gaming is on the rise — and esports organizations are starting to take notice
Though the mobile gaming market is dominated by casual players, competitive mobile gaming is slowly growing into a significant facet of the space. To reach those players, large game developers such as Riot Games are dipping their toes into mobile esports through adaptations such as Wild Rift, and esports organizations are beginning to follow suit by adding mobile players to their rosters.
Driven by a pandemic-fueled increase in idle fingers, mobile gaming has exploded in popularity over the last two years. The mobile-game player base increased by 12% worldwide between 2019 and 2020, according to a report by market research firm IDC and digital advertising platform LoopMe, with much of this behavior projected to persist post-pandemic.
Nearly 60% of gamers in North America and Europe regularly play mobile games, but this figure pales in comparison to the 87% saturation of mobile gaming in the Southeast Asian market, according to Carlos Alimurung, CEO of Singapore-based esports website ONE Esports. “The market is only going to get way more competitive, both in mobile gaming and mobile esports,” Alimurung said. “You have Riot Games pushing Wild Rift — not only in the region but globally. And you also have Riot already talking about taking Valorant mobile.”
Mobile esports is particularly popular in parts of Asia where more established esports titles are relatively inaccessible. “In 2018, when PUBG Mobile was launched globally, I thought that this game could be a potential esport for this region,” said MD Ekramuzzaman, a former competitive PUBG Mobile player in Bangladesh. “If you talk about Bangladesh or any South Asian country, proper esports is not a thing for us, because building a PC costs a lot of money from the perspective of a South Asian family.”
Furthermore, the mobile gaming scene audience skews younger than either the gaming or general esports audience. “People have recognized that the age for someone in America, in terms of owning their first phone, is only getting younger,” Alimurung said. “That trend is only exacerbated in Asia.” The recent growth of mobile gaming within this younger demographic was rapid enough to alarm the Chinese government, which instituted a three-hour weekly gaming limit for under-18 players on August 30.
Given the dual strength of mobile esports within both Asia and younger gamers at large, Immortals Gaming Club’s decision to sign the Korean-born Du-hoon “Hoon” Jang as its first mobile-focused player was a logical move. Jang, a YouTuber with over 400,000 subscribers, started his career playing the mobile online multiplayer battle arena (MOBA) title Mobile Legends but transitioned to League of Legends: Wild Rift when the Riot-Games-developed MOBA opened beta access in late 2020.
“We believe that that young demographic is going to recognize mobile gaming as something they’re very familiar with,” said Immortals vp of marketing Max Bass. “Knowing that Wild Rift adoption is a goal of Riot’s, we’re hoping there’s Wild Rift familiarity — we’re hoping that there’s awareness for the game, that there’s engagement for the game.” Immortals is leaning in on its signing of Jang and other Wild Rift players by investing in mobile-native content such as Wild-Rift-themed Snapchat lenses.
So far, Immortals is the largest North American esports organization to sign a Wild Rift player — but it almost certainly won’t be the last, according to experts such as Alimurung. Shortly after Immortals announced its signing of Jang on August 2, the esports team Sentinels followed suit, announcing the pickup of its own Wild Rift squad on August 6. Among the other large esports organizations that have signed mobile competitors are Andbox, which brought on a full Call of Duty: Mobile team in June, and Team SoloMid, whose Brazilian division picked up a Free Fire squad in August.
“It’s clear from all the statistics around mobile gaming that the audience is here, and while we’ve been involved in the space for a few years now, we felt now was the time to formalize our presence with the team,” said Rohit Gupta, co-founder and general manager of Andbox. His reasoning comes down to key trends: that developers, from Activision with Call of Duty and Riot Games with League of Legends: Wild Rift, are taking their biggest brands to mobile thanks to better hardware as well as the proliferation of 5G. Gupta also noted the second point is down to its aforementioned growth in popularity outside of main markets like Asia and Latin America.
All told, the mobile esports team creates an opportunity for Andbox to grow the popularity of its brand through a mix of content produced in partnership with members of the Call of Duty: Mobile team and its roster of creators as well as competing in more tournaments.
“It’s an opportunity for us to bring incremental audiences to the team but we also feel we can bring more casual mobile gamers with us too,” said Gupta. “Mobile gamers tend to be more casual so feel there’s plenty of opportunity ahead for crossover.”
These fans could potentially open up new commercial opportunities for Andbox.
“Mobile esports is underserved when it comes to media dollars, which is surprising when you look at how much time is spent on those titles but then again the same could be said about esports more broadly,” he added. “There are, however, signs that brands are starting to wake up. Last year was eye-opening for many of them given how much growth there was when traditional sports went quiet.”
Even if consoles and gaming computers eventually reach market saturation in Asia, it’s unlikely that they will cannibalize the popularity of mobile gaming and mobile esports in the region. “Mobile esports are here to stay,” said Bolin Wang, managing director of content+ at Mindshare China. “Mobile, PC and console esports won’t replace each other, as they can have vastly different ecosystems, audiences and marketing value for brands.”
For the moment, mobile esports remains a small sliver of the broader mobile gaming market, which was worth nearly $100 billion in 2020, according to a report by ResearchAndMarkets.com. “Mobile esports is definitely interesting,” said Andy Tian, CEO of social entertainment company Asia Innovations Group. “But, like in the States, esports does not drive mobile gaming revenue.”
However, Alimurung believes that mobile esports will begin to capture more of the general esports market over time: “Our general hypothesis is that mobile esports will not only be the dominant platform in Asia but also in the rest of the world.”
Future potential notwithstanding, mobile esports are, at the very least, a rapidly growing avenue for large game developers and esports teams to reach fans in overlapping and emerging demographics. With Riot Games investing in the mobile infrastructure of competitive titles such as Wild Rift and Valorant, advertisers and media companies in esports would be wise to keep an eye on this burgeoning subsection of the mobile gaming space.
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Petco Reminds Us Pets Have Feelings, Too
When you’re feeling anxious, how do you cope? Do you seek out healthy solutions or are you prone to more destructive behaviors? That’s the central question in a new ad from retailer Petco, which tackles mental health–with a bit of a twist. It’s the latest chapter in Petco’s “It’s what we’d want if we were…
‘We don’t have to deal with the microaggressions’: Confessions of a marketer on returning to in-person work as a woman of color
For the last 18 months, remote work has become the norm for most corporate employees thanks to the COVID-19 global pandemic. But with the advent of vaccines, talk of returning to the office has been bubbling up in company emails, Zoom calls and Slack messages.
For some in the U.S., that return — whether it be hybrid or full time — was slated for this week, on the heels of a long Labor Day weekend. However, with a rise in COVID-19 infection cases and variants, plans are once again in flux. The uncertainty has left at least one tech startup marketing strategist feeling anxious after finding remote work to be more productive and, as a woman of color, less daunting than in-office work. Digiday caught up with the strategist to talk about anxiety around returning to the office, working as a woman of color and what makes company culture.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
How are you feeling about returning to an in-person office environment?
The return to work for some of our counterparts has been really exciting because they love to be in that space together. But the return to work for a lot of people like me is very dreadful. I started this job thinking it would be fully remote and then heard from leadership that we would go back, which hasn’t happened yet. My biggest thing is that I’m not comfortable. The office space is open now and people can go if they want to. A lot of people who are going happen to be some of the white people. We have an employee resource group that is dedicated to African Americans and Black people who work there. A lot of them were talking about how they just weren’t comfortable.
Why do you think there’s discomfort around going back to the office for you and the group?
[It’s] being around people with the delta variant. Also, we’re a lot more productive at home. We don’t have to deal with the microaggressions. We don’t have to deal with smiling, happy and in somebody’s face all the time. I’m more of an introvert. God forbid I show a face where I’m not happy, then it’s ‘You’re not a team player’ when really I’m just tired.
Also, I live far from where my office is [located]. So [to] consider driving or taking public transportation to that space… Having to get up in the morning, sometimes around 5 or 6 a.m., to get there by 9, work until 6, get back home by 9 and do it all over again?
Tell us more about what remote work means for women of color, especially Black women.
People don’t realize how much it takes to be presentable. I have to go back to the office so now I’m thinking about what my hair looks like. Is this work appropriate? All of that comes back that you didn’t even have to deal with for a while.
What do you think leadership needs to understand about returning to the office?
When people say, “I don’t feel comfortable,” it’s not, “Well, how can we make you comfortable when you come in?” It’s, “How can we make you uncomfortable, period.” We’ve already shown you that we can work from home. There’s been proof for the last 18-19 months. There shouldn’t be a “but.” They should approach it as if anybody wants to go to the office, you can, and people should choose that.
Companies are so consumed with getting back and returning back to normal that they’re not thinking about people. Y’all talk about research but you’re only talking about research as much as it contributes to how much money you’re going to make. You’re not thinking about how in the middle of New York City, Chicago, Miami or wherever your office space is, that the towns around it are being affected. The employees are being affected. Their families are being affected and you’re just like, trying to go back to normal.
So what happens if they require everyone to go back to in-person work?
I’ve just gotten to a space where I’m just not willing. That took a certain level of confidence in my work and confidence in myself after dealing with imposter syndrome. I have gotten to the space where I value my time, my family and being around so much more while still being able to work, and I am unwilling to let that go anymore. If they say we’re coming back, fully, I’m going to say, “Well, thank you for your time.” I know that not a lot of people have that luxury, and I even take that into account. But I know that for a fact it’s just not worth it for me.
The post ‘We don’t have to deal with the microaggressions’: Confessions of a marketer on returning to in-person work as a woman of color appeared first on Digiday.