3 Reasons Advertisers Should Choose Gaming for Audio Ads

Audio is the fastest-growing advertising format. And that’s only based on podcasts and streaming music services. There’s another untapped area for growth – mobile games.

In 2021, audio was the fastest-growing ad format. According to a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, digital audio grew by 57.9% to $4.9 billion – the highest year-on-year growth. And that’s largely due to people using music streaming services and listening to podcasts.

But there’s another opportunity available to audio advertisers. Audio advertising is on the verge of growing exponentially – through mobile games. While this channel is new and largely untapped, gaming and audio go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Here’s why.

The magic combination: reach and engagement

Everyone is a gamer these days. By any metric, gaming reaches a truly diverse audience. There are over 3 billion gamers worldwide. Of those gamers, 71% of mothers play video games regularly and nearly a third of 45 to 64-year-olds play games.

Gaming is an industry that advertisers traditionally overlooked because of preconceived notions. But mobile gaming is the largest part of the gaming industry, and it has a diverse and massive audience. Consider that 3 billion figure we mentioned earlier – that’s far more than the 256 million ad-supported Spotify users around the world.

And people spend around 8.5 hours gaming a week. That’s eight hours of active attention where the player fully engages with the activity. By comparison, people listen to 18.4 hours a week listening to music, but that figure includes time spent driving, working or doing chores around the house. Gaming provides a lean-in, rather than lean-back, context for your audio ads.

There’s value in audio ads during gameplay

There are two types of audio placements. Firstly, there are rewarded ads, where the player actively chooses to opt in and listen to an ad in exchange for in-app currency or some other form of value. This adapts the popular and commonly used rewarded video placement for audio.

Secondly, there are in-level audio ads – where the ad plays in the background of the game. It doesn’t break the flow of play or delay the next level like an interstitial ad. But while it runs, the player is actively engaged in the game and actually listens to the content.

Both of these types of placements drive a positive lift in awareness and other brand metrics, since they capture attention and work in harmony with gameplay.

Audio can be programmatic, too

Just as display formats have moved to programmatic buying, many platforms are making it easy to buy audio placements as well. This makes it easier than ever to allocate budgets to audio and add scale to existing audio campaigns. Advertisers can extend the reach of their campaigns, reusing the creatives they’re running for in-stream placements. And they can increase the value and lifetime of those creatives.

On top of that, the measurement tools advertisers use for in-app video can be leveraged for audio too. Thanks to Open Measurement SDK and Oracle MOAT integrations, advertisers don’t suffer from the same data gaps as when they advertise in podcasts. 

Get regular updates

In a rapidly growing sector such as audio advertising, it’s important to stay informed about the latest developments and trends. Reach out to our team if you’d like to learn how to get your audio ads live in mobile games.