We discuss the value of the gaming sector for advertising. However, when we compare the size of the industry with the existing advertising expenditures, we see that the gaming industry is not given enough space in advertising without the need for a long analysis. We would like to examine this issue more thoroughly.

Is It Still a Niche?

We can say that the advertising industry’s biggest bias against the idea of “game” is that this idea is still seen as a niche. But that is not how things actually are. To categorize gamers as a niche audience now, when mobile games have significantly increased the number of casual players, would be to demonstrate a shocking lack of knowledge.

One can categorize the players into hardcore and casual gamers. Casual gamers are those that play video games for fun, typically on their mobile devices. Hardcore players, on the other hand, are individuals who incorporate PC gaming into every aspect of their lives.

It is certain that the advertising industry has developed a certain understanding of casual gamers. Investments and advertising-related technologies are growing quickly. However, it’s uncertain how much is sufficient.

On the other side, the advertising business has no idea who the audience for hardcore players is. Something is known to be going on there, but no real effort is being made.

The following details need to be understood: The video game industry is larger than the combined size of the movie and sports industries. Globally, there are 2.7 billion players. And these are significant numbers.

Chance for the Perfect Context

Creating engagement is one of the main issues facing modern advertising. Ads must be presented to the intended audience in the appropriate context in order to generate engagement. Games offer this context.

Games undoubtedly rank among the content types with the highest levels of engagement. Both movies and sporting activities can’t keep viewers glued to the screen. Sometimes, even during the most thrilling tournament finals, we check our phones.

Games are not like that. The video games provide an engaging experience. They also provide it every day, not only on particular days. The typical gamer plays for seven hours per week.

It is true that there is tremendous potential here. Advertisers must effectively utilize this potential. According to the context, they must insert their advertisements inside the games.

For a long time, automakers have included their vehicles in racing simulations. This is a good example of product placement by context. However, it’s pretty simple. It is possible to make more sophisticated integrations with today’s technology.

The ad industry has to learn more about the gaming sector and broaden its current understanding of games. The game world no longer being a mysterious box will be advantageous for both the advertising industry and the gaming sector.

For most of the population, social media has become the internet itself. Therefore, social media is one of the most important communication points for brands that want to meet their target audience on the internet. However, the fact that e-commerce businesses use this contact point only for the promotion of products and services causes them to add another layer for sales. Social commerce makes it possible to sell things through social media, which speeds up the sales cycle.

Inspiration in the Purchasing Process

Undoubtedly, shortening the check-out process is one of the most important advantages of social commerce. However, this is not the only advantage. In particular, the younger generations get their inspiration for shopping from social media. A study showed that 97% of Gen Z use social media as the biggest source of content for their purchasing decisions. This means that social commerce does not only make the e-commerce process practical for the user; it also shows that it brings users closer to the source of inspiration.

A More Personalized Way to Reach Your Audience

One of the most important reasons for the success of social commerce is the ability to reach potential customers through personalized systems. Since the activities of people on social media are much more traceable than on other channels, it becomes easier to recommend products and services that they are more likely to purchase.

Communication and Sales: One Channel

One of the biggest advantages of social commerce is that communication and sales with the target audience can be carried out through a single channel. Brands that restrict their sales to their own e-commerce sites use their social media for communication while selling from their websites. The fact that these two channels act independently of each other causes a lack of synergy. Social trading solves this problem. In this way, a more loyal customer base emerges.

There is data to confirm this insight. A study showed that 72% of millennials are more loyal to brands that engage with them on social media.

There Are Great Opportunities for Small and Medium Businesses

We should also say that social commerce offers great opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses. Recently, there has been a shift in e-commerce from large retailers to smaller businesses. These businesses consist of local businesses and businesses with expertise in a particular field. Social media offers these businesses great opportunities. Since these businesses are more likely to be able to communicate with their customers more effectively than big retailers, they are also more likely to make sales.

To summarize, social commerce has reached a level that e-commerce operations of all sizes simply cannot ignore. Businesses that use social media not only as a communication channel with their target audience, but also as a sales channel earn more. If you run such an operation, you should seriously consider using the power of social media to sell.

One of the most important problems of almost every website is to drive more traffic. Especially for e-commerce sites, this problem is bigger. Because the relationship between traffic and money in e-commerce sites is closer than in any other site type.

There are four main traffic sources for almost every website:

• Direct traffic
• Traffic from social media and other websites
• Paid traffic
• Organic traffic

Today we will make a comparison between paid traffic and organic traffic.

Can a Comparison Really Be Made?

We tend to perceive paid traffic and organic traffic as alternatives to each other. However, this is a big mistake.

Paid and organic farming have their own advantages and disadvantages; so we must begin by recognizing that they serve different purposes. In this way, we can optimize our investments in website traffic to get maximum results.

Paid Traffic: Fast Path to Results (For a Price)

It doesn’t take a marketing guru to tell you that the biggest difference between paid and organic traffic is that one is free and the other is paid. What matters is what this price is paid for.

Paid traffic can be very useful in situations where results are required in a short time. This may be a sales campaign or promotion of a new website. However, it should be noted that paid traffic is a type of traffic that brings success as money is spent. Therefore, when calculating the success achieved with paid traffic, the money spent should also be evaluated.

It doesn’t take a marketing guru to tell you that the biggest difference between paid and organic traffic is that one is free and the other is paid. What matters is what this price is paid for.

Paid traffic can be very useful in situations where results are required in a short time. This may be a sales campaign or promotion of a new website. However, it should be noted that paid traffic is a type of traffic that brings success as money is spent. Therefore, when calculating the success achieved with paid traffic, the money spent should also be evaluated.

Right Harmony

Instead of choosing between organic traffic and paid traffic, it is much more accurate to focus on creating an efficient harmony between both traffic types. In this way, it is possible to take advantage of the advantages of both types of traffic and achieve marketing objectives in the most efficient way.

If you have a new website and want to get traffic in a short time, it would be a good choice to focus on paid traffic. Paid traffic can create a good boost for your website launch. However, on the other hand, by making organic traffic investments, you can guarantee the traffic continuity of your website in the long run. In this way, you will get more return on your investment.

There is no magic formula when it comes to website traffic. For every website there is a different strategy to success. But what successful strategies have in common is that they don’t restrict traffic sources to a single channel. Identify the right traffic channels for your website and try to create a smart harmony between them. In this way, you will be successful.

We always think about the future. But the change we’ve been through in the last few years is making us think even more about the future. It’s no different when it comes to media buying. Let us share with you some of our predictions about the future of media buying.

Technology Will Shape the Future

This is not a new fact. We all know that technology is the number one variable that will drive the future of media buying. What we don’t know is how technology will develop and how people will adapt to it.

In particular, the fact that streaming services have become much more common and concepts such as metaverse are based on concrete foundations will cause the media where people see advertisements to change forever. This will naturally affect the dynamics of media buying.

Targeting: A Much More Complex Job

Thanks to technology, targeting is now much easier. But in the future, when audiences will be more split up, it will be harder for media buyers to keep track of all these different groups.

Here we need to add that the line between media buying and creative operations will become more and more blurred with each passing day. In a communication environment where messages must be shaped according to the medium and context, knowing the media will be a prerequisite for being creative.

The Future of Media Buying Agencies May Be at Risk

In the future, media buying operations will have much more strategic importance. Advertisers are likely to want to keep these operations, which will have more complex structures, in-house. We can observe this trend even today. In a future where access to data will be much more problematic with the privacy regulations made, brands will not want to consolidate all their data sources and share them with the outside.

The Human Factor: Much More Important

We may be exaggerating when we talk about the future role of technology. We see this in the TV programs of the 1960s in which predictions about the future were made. Most of the predictions about the 2000s in this era of technological optimism are inaccurate. None of us are driving flying cars yet.

The same may be true today. While technology facilitates many media buying operations, there may be a greater need for human insight in making strategic decisions. We need to know that the foresight of machines has to be based on the data available but that humans do not always act in accordance with the data. If that were the case, millions of dollars could be made in the stock market just thanks to algorithms.

We live in a time of great change. It is not possible for us to predict most things. One thing we do know: Time will tell what will happen.

Recently, the concept of “metaverse” has become one of the concepts we hear most often. Although not new as a concept, metaverse, which has become more realistic to become a part of the future with the development of technology, naturally attracts the attention of advertisers. This concept, which has started to be perceived more seriously, especially with Facebook’s change of company name to Meta, has many unknowns. We would like to share with you some of our predictions for this area where no one has definite ideas.

It Could Be the End of the Internet as We Know it

Metaverse and the concepts developed around it indicate that we will enter a new era on the internet. This era is called “web 3.0”.

You are probably familiar with the concepts of web 1.0 and web 2.0 and know the difference between them. It looks like the change in Web 3.0 will be bigger than the change between the first two phases of the internet. The biggest reason for this is the disappearance of central structures to a large extent.

Most of the Metaverse projects have the character of DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). Therefore, it seems that the central structures of the physical world that are moved to the internet will not exist in the metaverse. This will basically create a very different communication and working environment for advertisers.

Data and Context

One of the most important consequences of the disappearance of centralized structures is the dramatic change in data sources. In advertising, which can now be called “conventional”, user data is provided by centralized structures. The massive reduction in the number of these structures in the Metaverse will force advertisers to collect data more creatively for accurate targeting.

It won’t be easy. Being anonymous and establishing an alternative life to the physical world may become popular in the metaverse. This will make the job of advertisers very difficult.

In Metaverse, advertisers will have to deal with audiences that are more trailered. In order to know the masses, it will be important to know the metaverse and social dynamics closely. This can result in advertising operations being dependent on more insight and becoming much more complicated.

Delivering Value

One of the most important aspects of the metaverse concept is the more equitable sharing of the value generated within the community. It is possible to say that this share distribution, which is possible thanks to the crypto economy, will be fairer than today’s conditions. At least on paper…

Today, platform owners keep an extremely large slice of the revenue pie. They share a small portion of this cake with content producers. For ordinary users, there is nothing left.

Things are changing in the Metaverse. Thanks to NFTs and coins, everyone will be able to earn something.

Brands need to understand these dynamics well. Sharing only commercial messages will no longer make sense. Messages from brands that do not offer value to the Metaverse will disappear.

What We Actually Know: Nothing!

As we said at the beginning, we actually don’t know much about the metaverse. What we know does not go beyond simple guesses. This is the nature of change on the Internet. Therefore, it is very important to follow the developments closely and observe them constantly. The future will show us what will happen in the future.

Netflix has been said to be working on ad-show plans for some time. Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings’ recent words indicated that the firm has taken concrete moves in this regard. Probably in the next few months we will see Netflix packages with ads that are much lower in price. So, in the grand scheme of things, what does this mean?

The most compelling reason for Netflix to make such a drastic adjustment is clearly the company’s recent revenue decline. The loss of approximately 700,000 Netflix members as a result of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as well as its inability to compete in international markets against local competitors, are two of the most significant causes for this fall. Netflix is, of course, working on formulas to adjust for the drop. Among these solutions, the most logical one is to offer packages with advertisements.

This isn’t a brand-new idea. This solution has previously been tested and successful by Hulu, Disney, and HBO. Netflix relies on the success these companies have achieved.

Netflix’s choice is also supported by consumer studies in developed nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom. According to studies, the vast majority of consumers are prepared to see advertising in exchange for significantly lower membership fees.

This significant shift reveals an important truth about consumer behavior. Let’s talk a little about that.

Until now, the biggest sales force of paid video on demand platforms was thought to be ad-free. Users did not object to seeing advertising in exchange for decreased membership fees, indicating that convenience was a more essential factor.

Subscription-based entertainment services, including Netflix, do indeed provide users with a wide pool of high-quality content as well as convenience. Low-cost content platforms have made it much easy to access content that was previously difficult to obtain, particularly through illicit means. As a result, these video, music, and gaming content providers have become a vital part of our lives.

Netflix, a high-end video streaming service, has customer data that makes advertisers salivate. As a result, advertising on Netflix will almost certainly be substantially more expensive than on other channels. Advertisers, on the other hand, will be willing to pay the premium because the targeting is so much more precise.

In the following days, we may expect this paradigm to spread to more premium content producers. While the ad-free membership plans are still available, we may see ad-supported membership programs with significantly cheaper rates. Advertisers will be drawn to these platforms because of their high engagement and targeting possibilities. These advancements could be a lifesaver for marketers in today’s world, where access to customer data is becoming increasingly difficult.