Think about this for a moment: almost 40% of the world’s population, over 2.96 billion people, consider themselves gamers. Since the dawn of Atari in the 1970s, the industry has boomed—it’s now larger than the movie and music industries combined—and is expected to be worth $321 billion by 2026.
As video game technology has grown more sophisticated, so has the average gamer. Once primarily marketed to kids, especially males, the demographic is shifting, and up to 45% of gamers are female, with a median age of 33. Add to this the fact that a digitally native generation is growing up gaming—80% of Gen Z plays video games—and the industry holds unprecedented opportunities as it continues to evolve and expand, along with the development of the metaverse.
To tap into the industry’s massive revenue potential, media companies are grappling with setting themselves ahead of the crowd and vying for the attention, and loyalty, of this captive audience through in-game advertising. With the power of real-time insights, brands can deliver personalized content to delight existing customers and push timely offers and info to attract new ones. To do so, most enterprises rely on martech stacks that are a mix of legacy software, on-prem solutions and cloud-based SaaS offerings—a combination that can include up to a staggering 91 different tools—to find, sort, analyze and leverage consumer data. For many, this complexity comes with a variety of challenges, including:
- Data that sits across disparate sources, systems, business units and teams
- Underdeveloped capabilities and staffing to create, use and optimize content at scale to deliver personalized experiences
- Difficulty identifying and targeting high-value audiences who are willing to buy merchandising or to subscribe to premium content and services
With over 8,000 vendors in the martech ecosystem, it’s easy to see how over time, enterprises that adopted single-use tools to achieve a specific goal have been left with an environment of sprawl – and a lack of integration between applications. To solve these challenges, leading companies are embracing martech transformations to reduce complexity, streamline operations and inspire innovation. The end goal is to deliver rich, personalized marketing experiences that connect and convert.
To get there, enterprises must work with a martech transformation vendor that can bring marketing to the next level—a strong Player B, if you will to support in-house efforts. Creating the frictionless experiences that today’s consumers expect relies on personalization, backed by an end-to-end customer journey and a single source of truth. Let’s look at the role each one plays in empowering marketing teams to transform for optimal business outcomes.
The name of the game is personalization
As companies put personalization at the forefront of their enterprise strategies, there is a shift from simply ‘marketing to customers’ to leveraging the power of data to create personalized experiences—to attract and retain consumers with customized content. Whether it’s name recognition, location-based recommendations or messages based on preferences, marketers are capitalizing on practical ways to enact personalization across their campaigns to meet this demand.
A seamless end-to-end journey
84% of people say that the experience provided by a business is equally important to the product or service they’re using. By utilizing the full capabilities of the martech stack, brands are empowered to optimize the entire customer journey from beginning to end. A fully developed digital roadmap that includes process optimization and enhancement strategies can eliminate common pain points, and the customer journey can be mapped across all touch points to improve conversion rates and user experience.
A single source of truth
Businesses need a single source of truth for a highly curated set of reusable assets with the ability to select the specific content needed to provide consistent customer experiences across channels. Furthermore, as third-party cookies come to an end, businesses must leverage data and remove it from silos, to optimize the experience and understand prospects on a more intimate level, including preferences and behaviors.
As the gaming industry reaches new audiences and grows to achieve its market potential, media companies willing to bet on in-game advertising will uncover new ways to connect with consumers. As the metaverse evolves in tandem, allowing for entirely immersive in-game ads, brands of all sizes will jockey to get in on the action. By unraveling martech’s complexity and unleashing personalized experiences, media companies will be well positioned to get ahead of the competition as we enter the next marketing era.
With an extensive partner ecosystem, more than 1,200 martech engineers and experts, and a wealth of technology industry experience, Virtusa has everything you need to make your marketing transformation a reality. Get started today [register for martech transformation in media webinar].
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With deep engineering roots, Virtusa brings decades of expertise to eliminate MarTech complexity.
