• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 13, 2024

As the editor of trade publications focused on where advertisers and agencies plan and buy media, I've struggled for years to understand why the digital gaming industry isn't more of the mix.

Apparently, GroupM's Global Business Intelligence unit has been wondering the same thing. And the answer, according to the unit's Global President Kate Scott-Dawkins, is that while ad spending in the $100 billion-plus gaming industry isn't exactly chopped liver, it still has not been enough to qualify as a distinct media line item. Until maybe now.

In an analysis published Thursday in her "This Week In Data" newsletter, Scott-Dawkins estimates the sector expanded to just under $7 billion in ad revenue in 2023 -- about 6.5% of gaming's total revenue -- and is now about "triple the size" of an advertising medium already baked in as an ad industry line item: the global cinema advertising marketplace.

"This is now a category worth a closer look," she writes.