Microsoft Advertising’s Post

Transcript

If there's 3.4 estimated to be clear, 3.4 billion gamers in the world. O In all of the years when I've gone out and spoke with brands and our partners in terms of the opportunity in gaming, there's this very persistent myth about the fact that gaming is primarily the domain of young men. And what I can tell you is that the average gamer is just as likely to identify as female as male, right? The average gamer isn't necessarily young. They're 33 years of age. The average gamer has been playing games for some 21 years. So whereas we like to think. About the gaming audience is like these folks in the basement, it's much more likely that these are the folks paying the mortgage on the House that the basement is within, right? Like that's the big twist that we need to make here. So all of this rolls up to this big number that you'll hear sometimes and that's there's 3.4 estimated, to be clear, 3.4 billion gamers in the world. OK, so this translates to about one in three people on the planet. It's actually close to about 40%. We're one of the few ecosystems that can reach gamers and all the different ways that they want to play across all the modalities that are meaningful to them is the Xbox platform. So one of the reasons that Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard was not just because of the great IP we have, though certainly part of it, but also because Activision Blizzard happened to be one of the largest mobile developers in the world. So before Xbox had obviously a strong foothold, console has strong foothold in PC, not the least of which due to the Windows ecosystem. But then above and beyond that, we add on these new developers native to mobile, and we finally reach a place where we can find gamers and interact with them in the ways they want to play, how they want to play, and importantly with the people that they want to play. So the opportunity for brands then is to really kind of understand like what's the way that we can leverage this in a way that will be accretive to your goals. We hear a lot that, you know, opportunities and gaming are a little scary because like game players don't like ads. And again, I I actually don't think that's true. Game players don't like bad ads. So the IBU K actually came up with the framework that I referenced a lot because I think it's useful for understanding this and that's opportunities in around an adjacent to the game, right. So in the game is might be pretty obvious. That is an advertisement that will exist within the game play environment around the game is going to be something like, you know. And hopped in potential unit somewhere between levels in a way is kind of the stuff you'd expect from any kind of entertainment partnership in terms of like Marks and writes on pack and things of that nature. And the way to think about these is that the further away you get from the game, the more flexibility you're going to have in terms of really being able to do some things that are like fairly creative. But as we get closer to it, we just want to make sure that we are again, honoring the gameplay experience and making sure that's seamless for our players. So that's why there tends to be that sweet spot that's like somewhere between in the game and away from the game. That's around the game, just kind of depends on what your strategy is. And it's always gonna come down to not just wanting to come in and check the box that like gaming did it done, but that in this case it was something purposeful for your brand. And again, we're here to help navigate that.