For years, one of the most visible approaches to putting brands into gaming has been to build something new.
A branded game. A virtual world. A major activation designed to give people somewhere new to go.
There is nothing wrong with that approach. But it creates an obvious challenge. Once you've built the destination, you still need to convince people to show up. Meanwhile, the audience is already inside gaming.
According to Statista, 82.1% of internet users aged 16 to 64 globally played video games on some device in Q2 2025. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, penetration reached 91.5% among women and 93% among men.
Michael Anav, CEO and co-founder of ReachPlayers, believes there is another way for marketers to approach the brief. "We don't start a social campaign by building a new social network. So why should a gaming brief automatically start with building somewhere new? The audience is already there. The opportunity is to give the brand a meaningful role inside the games people already love."
Being inside the game isn't enough
Reaching an existing audience is only part of the opportunity. A banner inside a game is still a banner. A pop-up is still an interruption. In-game branded content becomes more interesting when the brand contributes to what the player is already doing.
A product can become something they find or use. A character can send them on a mission. A product benefit can become a challenge. "There's a big difference between putting a brand inside a game and giving players something worth doing with it," says Anav. "Players are exploring, competing, choosing and interacting. The brand should have a role in that." And that role can look completely different by category.
For CeraVe, skincare education became part of challenges around acne, skin types and product knowledge. For NYX, players discovered products and learned how they worked together while progressing. For Samsung, product features became gameplay mechanics players could actually use. And for AFL, the challenge was different again: bringing the sport into gaming for a younger Australian audience.
That variety matters. In-game branded content shouldn't become another standard format with a different logo attached.
The bigger opportunity is repeatability
Creative is only half the equation. If gaming is going to become a recurring part of media plans, marketers also need familiar ways to plan, buy and measure it. In-game branded content can increasingly be planned around CPMs, impressions, unique reach, geographic targeting, brand safety, engagement and brand lift.
"The creative should feel like gaming. The buying shouldn't have to feel unfamiliar," says Anav. "Marketers still need to know who they're reaching, what they're paying and what happened afterwards."
What becomes repeatable isn't the creative. It's the process: find the audience, identify the right gaming environments, give the brand a meaningful role, buy against understandable media metrics, measure the result and learn. "The real sign of progress isn't another brand entering gaming once," says Anav. "It's when they come back."
The opportunity isn't simply to get more brands into gaming. It's to make it easier for those brands to come back, invest again and make gaming a repeatable part of the media plan.
