Brands that dismiss games as a niche interest are missing out on one of the most powerful media channels available today.
November 20, 2024
Illustration by Vilmante Juozaityte ‘Bulma’
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Organizations are still learning how to think about games as media for marketing. Games aren’t typically covered in marketing classes in business schools, and they are often still seen as fundamentally different from other media. Modern-day games offer companies varied opportunities to connect with new and hard-to-reach customers, drive brand awareness and loyalty, and acquire and retain new customers. Beyond the more immediate marketing goals of brand building and customer acquisition and retention, games can help companies build important capabilities.
As gaming becomes increasingly entrenched in mainstream culture, it presents a unique opportunity for brands to rethink how they engage with consumers. There are more than three billion digital gamers worldwide. And games are no longer just entertainment — they are complex media ecosystems where consumers spend significant time, engage deeply, and form emotional connections. As such, forward-thinking brands are starting to leverage games as powerful tools for integrated marketing strategies.
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Julian Runge is a behavioral economist and data scientist. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrate Marketing Communications. Previously, Julian worked as a researcher on game data science and marketing analytics at Northeastern, Duke and Stanford University, and at Facebook. Julian researches, builds, and advises at the intersection of games and marketing technology. His work has appeared in the proceedings of premier machine learning conferences such as IEEE COG and AAAI AIIDE, and in leading journals such as Information Systems Research and Quantitative Marketing and Economics.
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Joost van Dreunen is a leading expert on the video games business and interactive entertainment industry. As CEO of ALDORA, a games data provider, and former founder of SuperData Research (acquired by Nielsen), he combines entrepreneurial experience with deep industry analysis. He teaches at NYU’s Stern School of Business and is the author of One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games. He has also written for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Bloomberg Business, and publishes a weekly newsletter on gaming, tech, and entertainment.
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