By now, we’re all well aware that games like Fortnite have become a dominant space for kids and young adults to connect and socialize. But you may not have noticed that parallel to the competitive game’s popularity, the rise of esports leagues have captivated the interest of gamers around the world: since 2012, the number of hours viewers have spent watching esports has grown at a rate of around 750 million hours each year, going from 1.3 billion in 2012 to 6.6 billion in 2019, a 508% growth. 

This article was originally published for print in Marketing Interactive.

A lucrative business (generating $1.1 billion USD worldwide in 2019 and expected to reach $1.8 billion by 2022), esports have been particularly popular in Asia Pacific. In fact, APAC accounts for 47% of that revenue, demonstrating just how passionate the region is for gaming content. New research from WARC shows that 400 million people in APAC watch esports online, and six of the 10 most popular mobile titles have established esports leagues. The rapid growth of gaming as both a space for spectatorship and social connection offer a unique opportunity for brands to reach a previously elusive demographic while also connecting with consumers in exciting, new ways.

Gaming Goes Mainstream

Esports aren’t nearly as niche as they once were; last year, luxury brand Louis Vuitton collaborated with popular esports title League of Legends to offer bespoke skins—essentially costumes worn by characters featured in the game—to players. The partnership shifted preconceived notions that brands may have about gamers as a subculture, much like how comic book franchises have gone mainstream. Similarly, Fortnite partnered with Marvel Studios for an Avengers crossover event celebrating the release of a new film, offering not only an exclusive skin but a new game mode as well.

In the rise in esports’ popularity, games have organized teams and leagues functioning much like traditional sports—even nabbing airtime at the 2022 Asian Games to be hosted in Hangzhou, China. Live-streamed on platforms such as Twitch, YouTube and Facebook Gaming, esports leagues have a unique opportunity to build interactivity and engagement into their broadcasts—something that’s missing from typical sports. MediaMonks’ Foam Zone activation for Old Spice, live-streamed over 12 hours, drew over 126 thousand interactions bolstered by 80 live polls, making it a top-performing livestream.

This opportunity for drawing together online audiences is critical, and hints at why gaming has become so popular for youths who flock to digital environments to hang out and connect. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a surprising number of leagues have cancelled or postponed their events—though some, like Blizzard’s Hearthstone Masters Tour, have become purely digital. At the same time, the cancellation of traditional sport seasons may also boost interest in esports as an alternative to spectators. While in-person esports competitions serve as critical touchpoints to connect with gaming audiences live and in-person, this moment—combined with ever-faster connection speeds—will prompt increasingly engaging and immersive experiences for spectators.

Rising Stars Offer New Opportunities to Tech-Forward Brands

With the growing popularity of esports comes a new class of influencers: the players themselves. Brands looking to engage authentically with a native digital audience like gamers will do well to lean on such influencer partnerships. In launching its series of Omen gaming PC’s, HP tapped into the talent of esports stars Astralis and Na’Vi to validate the precision and power of the product.

Tapping into the fandom of these communities also offers a way for brands to think more holistically about the role they play in users’ lives; engaging not just in esports games themselves, but also across social media, through AR/VR technology, experiential platforms and more, to reach a hyper-passionate and discerning audience at the cusp of digital experiences. The world of esports offers brands the opportunity to expand their marketing efforts through fresh and innovative content, providing engaging digital experiences through personalization and emerging tech that can attract new, and previously out of reach, audiences.

By bridging together players and spectators that are immersed in socializing and connecting digitally, esports offer an enticing opportunity for brands in APAC and around the world to forge stronger relationships with consumers–by experimenting with in-game activations, elevating the livestreaming experience or by simply taking inspiration from the ways that players and fans interact.

Today’s brands face an incredible pressure to do more with less: there’s a need for always-on content spread across a vast number of channels to support. While this isn’t new, many traditional agencies still aren’t equipped to deliver that level of efficiency; many of them build businesses around a model based on tracking time spent rather than on success and attribution, stunting their ability to build long-term, collaborative relationships with clients.

The tailspin of the industry is well-documented. It’s the new-age, new-era advertising companies where industry action and growth is. In their “Predictions 2020: Agencies” report, Forrester Research urges that agencies finally disassemble what remains of their outmoded model and reassemble centralized structures and new capabilities strengthened by scaled data, technology and creativity.

This includes “[leveraging] in-house production capabilities, networks of creators, and dynamic creative engines to begin building the capacity to develop hundreds of assets that yield thousands of dynamically built creative iterations” and “[using] partnerships and white-labeled tech stacks to power just about every media type to enhance their scaled production capacity.” Forrester’s proposed model demonstrates that future-forward agencies have the potential to become the content engine uniquely equipped to power any channel supported by the brand.

The days of eschewing digital-first content for the traditional “big idea” are over. But don’t take it from me, take it from the largest advertiser on the planet, Mark Pritchard, Global Chief Brand Officer, P&G. “We’re breaking down the boundaries of functions, and operating in a fast-cycle, integrated, multi-skilled way, where speed matters and where every aspect of the consumer experience is created from the start.”

Don’t get Mark (or me) wrong, a (high quality) TVC can still be useful for broad reach for some audiences. It is, though, ill-equipped to achieve the relevancy required by today’s consumers, who are trained to tune out information that doesn’t immediately purport to serve them. One need only look at a widescreen TVC awkwardly cut-down into a vertically consumed, 6-second social ad to see why it doesn’t work.

What brands need to do instead is connect data and media strategy with creative ahead of moving into production. This enables a strategy for producing content that’s fit for format, fit for purpose and fit for moment. While that might sound overwhelming for brands that aren’t fluent in the nuances of different channels and how users interact on them, this approach is often cheaper and more efficient.

Efficiency isn’t just a matter of getting things done quickly. It’s about optimizing your media budgets at the same time. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. Brands that take a more strategic approach to their channel strategy and integrate it into the earliest phases of the creative process can likewise optimize their production to drive results. Fit-for-format blows traditional creative out of the water in terms of results. To quantify that: on average it’s typically above 30% – which is significant.

According to Dynamic Logic and Google, studies show on average that media placements only account for about 30% of a brand campaign’s success while the creative drives 70%. While creative freedom is important, an impactful campaign comes from testing out the channel strategy before putting the media spend behind it.

One might think that when it comes to speed, quality and value, you can only have two of the three. But new partnership models empower brands to achieve all three—precisely when close collaboration is valued by both brand and digital partner, they can both enjoy a seat at the table during strategic planning, resulting in better quality work.  For example, when both a media and agency partner join together early-on, that media plan serves as a starting point to strategize assets at scale, because your production team is equipped with knowledge needed to economically produce content for each of the formats you already know you need, rather than cut things down as an afterthought.

We’re in a new era where consumers demand a lot from today’s brands, who have a constant need to offer relevant content without cutting corners. As digital penetration continues to grow in the APAC region (with an appetite for content growing with it), it becomes all the more critical that brands select agency partners that are better equipped to pay them the care and willingness to collaborate that they need to succeed.

This post was originally published on CIO Advisor.