When gamers turn game-changers for brands

Looks like parents may finally come around to gaming after telling their kids for generations that it's bad for eyesight (or worse) or that it's a waste of time. As India’s internet population continues to explode, a majority of people online continue to gravitate towards online gaming and the endless possibilities that lie therein, including teenagers who are finding playing online for hours in front of a captivated audience to be a lucrative game-changer.

And advertisers are taking note.

Root to Succeed

Rooter, helmed by CEO Founder Piyush Kumar has realized and tapped into this very engagement, with the company becoming the first gaming platform in India that allows its community to earn while they are streaming. Concurrently, Rooter has been able to rope in over 100 brands like Flipkart, Amazon, Intel, HP, Pizza Hut, Godrej, PhonePe, Chingari, Josh and others to support and advertise on its platform.

“From our end, we believe very strongly in the monetization model. Nobody else is doing it right now. What Rooter is currently trying to do in the market is what Hotstar did back in 2015-2016. I myself was in marketing then and when they entered the market, Hotstar told all the brands and advertisers that people are going to shift from cable to OTT, and the other players (Netflix and Amazon), will never allow you to advertise on their platform, so we are your only option,” says Kumar.

Conceptualized in 2016, Rooter began as a sports social network and pivoted to a game streaming platform in 2020 amidst the pandemic. The Paytm-backed startup has since crossed 50M+ app installs, and 17 million+ MAUs.

What Hotstar did in terms of disrupting the market back then to what it’s become today is what Kumar is replicating with Rooter’s partnerships with gaming content creators. “We know that over the next few years, a major part of the population, especially younger cohorts, are going to be watching gaming content, even more than general entertainment and OTT stuff,” he says, pointing out that the barrier for entry is an inexpensive smartphone and inexpensive data.

It’s a fairly low investment for a potentially large payoff for gamers who can go on to become creators.

Numbers Game

Samiksha Mehta, Business Development Manager, Pollen, Zoo Media candidly points to the statistics, and numbers, unlike hype, don’t lie.  Globally, gaming influencers are the top influencer group followed by men (12%), on par with sports, music, and food influencers (all achieving 12%).

“While gaming started out as a single-player experience, that is not the case anymore,” she says, adding, “Streaming a game means broadcasting yourself via the internet while you play so that other people can watch you on their computer, phone, or games console.”

“No other form of influencing competes with gaming influencing on engagement level. It’s the most engaging type of influencer marketing. Think of it as a commercial within a movie or a commercial within a football match. Gaming audiences are patient and they are ready to spend two to four hours on the go, streaming their favourite game,” says Mehta, which gives a lot of opportunity for advertisement.

And Rooter believes they are creating this monetization model within the gaming category. “Currently brands are going to a game like Ludo, and advertising to players during the loading. There is no brand interaction or brand building,” says Kumar.

Khandelwal observes that one of the major reasons that gaming influencers and streamers are being increasingly preferred for brand associations is the audience they cater to. GenZ, Gen Alpha and the younger generation, in general, make up a large part of the demographic for such content, and a lot of brands these days are looking to leverage the younger market segment.

“We have two methods: brand monetization and user monetization. Brand monetization is split into a few parts: naturally, the obvious advertising, like display ads, given that brands want to target our unique audience category. Then there are the influencers, whom we connect with brands that are looking to reach out to audiences, and so they incorporate the brand messaging, etc. into their content,” says Kumar, noting that it is a CPV (cost-per-view) model while adding that the others are tournament sponsorships and performance marketing (stay tuned for a future story on gaming and performance marketing). The profit margins are huge, going up to 90 per cent.

At the end of the day, gaming influencers usually have their subscribers and followers in millions. Mehta concludes, “So brands that partner with them are guaranteed to get more views and followers. Besides, it is so much easier to reach out to a gamer and get him/her to create content as opposed to a popular celebrity. Keeping all these points in mind, why wouldn't brands associate with gamers and streamers?”