How Gaming Became A Media Buy In India
Gaming has been described as the next big Indian media channel for roughly as long as there has been an Indian digital media industry, and for most of that time the description was aspirational.
It became a real buy recently and quietly, and the reason has less to do with games than with the layer that grew on top of them.
Why gaming took so long to become a buy
In-game advertising is genuinely difficult. The environment is immersive, interruption is resented more than anywhere else, and the formats that do not interrupt are frequently invisible.
The audience also never behaved like a media audience. It was enormous, highly engaged and almost impossible to reach as a group rather than as individuals.
What changed
Streaming and creators. The buy is no longer placement inside a game; it is sponsorship of the person playing it, which turns an uncooperative environment into an ordinary creator deal with an unusually attentive audience.
Watch time is the reason. A viewer who stays with a stream for an hour is a different proposition from one who scrolls past a film, and the pricing has not fully caught up with that.
Real money reaching players changed the supply side too. Once streaming became a career rather than a hobby, the people doing it started behaving like professional partners, with rate cards, contracts and the reliability a brand needs before it will plan around someone.
What it is not
A mass channel. The reach is deep rather than wide, and it skews young and male in a way that many categories cannot justify.
It works best for brands whose buyers are already there and worst for brands who want to be seen to be modern. The second is how most of the wasted money in this channel gets spent.