How To Advertise Esports Games

In the previous article of our series “promoting online games in India,” we talked about the popularity and the ways to advertise Fantasy Sports games in India.

Here’s the link of previous articles of our series-

In this article, we will cover the following points:

Growth of E-sports in India
E-sports Marketing Challenges
Best suited approaches and advertising mediums to promote your E-sport game in India.

Table of Contents

The growth of E-sports in India

With the massive population of online mobile gamers, E-sports is another buzzword that has gained humongous popularity in India.

E-sports, collectively known as Electronic sports or competitive sports, are played alone or among teams to win the tournaments.

While globally growing at a CAGR rate of 26% (based on revenue), E-sports in India is still an untapped market which holds the potential to grow five-fold by 2021.

From 2 million user-base in 2017, the E-sports enthusiasts are expected to reach 10 Million by 2021. (Source- KPMG report)

The key reason for this massive growth is that sports have always one of the main sources of entertainment in India, and this expended genre, E-sports, has fascinated the millennial population like never before.

The rising popularity of Esports in India

While being featured as a demonstrated sport in the 2018 Asian Games, E-sports is also considered as a legit sport for Olympics 2020. Many industry leaders are organizing E-sports tournaments with luring prize as high as 1 crore.

More such tournaments like ‘ESL India Premiership 2018’, ‘COBX Masters 2018’, ‘UCypher’ etc. have helped in increasing the awareness among potential E-sports players and investors to put their money in this brimming industry. (source)

Popular E-sports games in India

PUBG, Fortnite, FIFA, Call of Duty, GTA, NFS, etc.

E-sports marketing challenges

Although the popularity of E-sports is increasing, India as an E-sport industry is way behind in the global list.

Here are the two major issues which play major resistors in advertising E-sports games in India –

Lack of awareness– Even though the user-base of E-sports is increasing in India, it’s still less in compared to the other online gaming genre and that is because of the lack of awareness among people.
High content exposure– India being the second highest internet subscribers’ country globally, the exposure of advertising content is overwhelming. In this era of content, the challenge is not getting exposed to your target audience but to make them take some action.

The Demographics of E-sports players in India

E-sports advertising approaches-

The industry is full of small and big key players. in this high competition arena, the chances of you getting lost are pretty high.

Here are the two main best-suited approaches to reach out to your targeted audience-

Affinity– The audience of E-sports is an array composed of many subsets that are based on the different categories, like- First shooter, Royal Battle, Sports based games, etc. Targeting people based on their content consumption behavior, and tailor your real-time content according to their preferred choice would give your brand more consideration.
Frequency– To grab the attention of your target audience, your ads must be exposed to your audience multiple times. Hence, platforms that have high frequency and reach are to be used.

10 Proven ways to advertise and promote your E-sports game

Keeping the above approaches in mind, here are the 10 effective mediums through which you can reach out to your targeted audience and make the most out of this progressive industry.

Online Media:

1. Online gaming streaming platforms– According to an article in Digit, a live streaming industry of online games has touched $10.1bn globally and is expected to reach $13.1bn with over 19 million creators projected to live stream.

Watching the live streaming of other players is also one of the most common habits of online gamers. Targeting them while they are highly engaged would be one of the best effective strategies to grab their attention.

Here are the two most popular streaming websites-

Twitch– It’s an amazon owned live streaming website which has the highest number of game streamers.
YouTube – After Twitch, Youtube is the second most preferred medium for the live streaming of online games.

2. Influencer Marketing- The majority of the gamers believe in the recommendations given by their connections, or by the other gamers they look forward to.

Reaching out the right influencers according to your targeted genre would be the best way to reach out to your audience directly and effectively.

Platforms for influencer marketing-

YouTube
Instagram
Facebook
Game Bloggers

3. Advertising on other gaming platforms– Advertising on other gaming platforms would be one of the most effective ways to reach out to your target audience group directly.

PUBG is one of the most popular gaming application to look for advertising.

4. Google Ads– With over millions of searches made every min on Google, running your search ad and Display network campaigns would be the best method to target people directly who are looking for your services or similar to yours.

5. Sports Platforms- Reaching out to your targeted audience where they usually go to consume information related to sports activities is one of the highly targeted strategies for getting more consideration.

Platforms with the highest reach in terms of sports news consumptions are:

6. Video and Audio OTT platforms– The majority of gamers join gaming platforms for entertainment. Video and Audio OTT services are on the peak and one of the greatest sources of entertainment among millennials.

Opting for video and audio OTT platforms would give your advertising strategy an extra weight.

Here are some of the most popular audio and video OTT platforms which are high in reach-

7. Truecaller– It’s one of the most popular apps for smartphones in India. With advanced filters and cohorts, Truecaller can be a strong advertising platform for your gaming app.

Offline Mediums –

8. Transit Advertising– Transit advertising medium is catching up real fast with having varieties of ad inventories. Advertising on particular metro lines and buses would directly target the millennials,

9. Outdoor and Transit Advertising– Hoardings near colleges, bus shelters, IT parks, and in malls would be the best way to grab the attention of students and working professionals.

10. TV Advertising– TV is the best advertising medium for mass reach at a national level.

Your advertising strategy can include one or more above discussed media for better results.

Here’s is the summarization of what we discussed in this article in a single table:

To know more about promoting E-sports games or in case you would want to share any feedback, write to us at Help@TheMediaAnt.com.

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