• by Andy Oakes  @andyoakes, March 7, 2014

Say you’re sitting in a media agency, and somebody mentions that there is a media owner that has 100 million registered users. You might sit up and wonder who the hell it was. That’s a pretty sizeable audience, you would think, I need to find out more. Then you hear it’s a game. How many of you would think again?

This week, we learned that "Minecraft" has passed 100 million registered users. The game seems to have been around forever. The first version of "Minecraft" was released in 2009. And its popularity is huge: The developer, Mojang, has reported sales of more than 41.8 million copies. 

Let’s add this into the mix as well: King, the maker of the game "Candy Crush Saga," is to list on the U.S. Stock Exchange, accompanied by a high-profile print campaign for latest title, "Farm Heroes Saga." It has underlined what clever advertisers already knew – games are big business and can provide a wide-ranging route to all sorts of audiences. But it seems that not everybody is in on the secret

Nadya Powell, UK managing director of social communications, summed up the current position and opportunity, “Gaming is a huge part of people’s online activities; it is the most popular activity on tablets and second-most popular on smartphones, and it offers huge reach and engagement,” she said. “Yet the budgets assigned to gaming by brands is less than 1% of total digital spend. The numbers just don't add up.” 

So why is this happening? There have been some excellent examples of in-game ads working well. A slightly bizarre example is GCHQ, part of the Intelligence network. Games enable GCHQ to recruit the technology and security experts it struggles to find, as they are likely to respond to a recruitment drive if ads are clever enough to grab their attention while playing. “It becomes the hook to get them to think and question what we do and how they could be part of that,” says a spokesperson.

Maybe it’s an education thing. I was surprised to find that the male-to-female ratio of gamers is split quite evenly, 54% to 46%, respectively. And this is fairly consistent across the younger demographics. Also, it’s worth remembering that, in the UK, more women than men between the ages of 35 and 44 are now playing online games. 

I recently spoke to Erik Goossens, chief executive officer at Spil Games, and asked if brands thought that gaming ads may be too much of a risk and that there were misconceptions about audience. He told me, “There are still misconceptions about the size and spread of the gaming audience – for many, the sector remains tarred with the brush that it is predominantly teenage boys in their basements.

"However, that has changed dramatically, thanks to the rise in popularity of games like "Candy Crush" and "Angry Birds." Gaming is now a major part of everyone’s online activities with cross-demographic appeal. Where online gaming really wins is its ability to target audiences. The data analysis that can be run on people playing online games means audience profiling can be refined to a degree that TV could only dream of. This leads to more relevant ads being presented to players and, ultimately, a more rewarding experience for all parties.”

So, here’s my tip. Go take another look at this sector. The opportunities look good, the rewards can be great and it seems that at the moment, you could get a great deal.