Despite the rise of cord cutters, television is still one of the best ways to reach shoppers during the holiday season. Video game advertising has strongly embraced TV ads last month to promote hot console titles coming out this fall.
VentureBeat reports that, for the month of October, console games hold four of the top five spender spots in the gaming industry. In total, 35 gaming brands ran a total of 97 commercials about 22,000 times on television, for a total of $72 million in airtime.
The companies that top the list include Activision, which leads the charge with 22.9 percent, thanks to hit titles like Guitar Hero: Live and Call of Duty: Black Ops III. In second place is Microsoft at 14 percent, which has been heavily pushing Halo 5: Guardians with cinematic ads, along with promotion for Rise of the Tomb Raider, which arrives next week. Following in third is Ubisoft with 12.6 percent in promoting Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, and Sony in fourth with Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (pictured above) as its big holiday push.
Activision spent about $15 million with the two spots for Guitar Hero Live and Black Ops III, and got 22 percent of the digital response for the entirety of the month as a result. Due to this, it’s likely to continue TV promoting, especially now that it recently acquired mobile giant King for $5.9 billion. The Guitar Hero: Live spot, featuring Lenny Kravitz and actor James Franco, is below.
Meanwhile, Microsoft came close behind with its live-action Halo 5: Guardians ads, with three in total running over the course of the month. Its “Launch” trailer got the most television plays, airing 472 times during the month. That ad can be seen below.
Ubisoft’s “Save London” ads for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate gave it an easy win in third place, running nearly 500 times over the month. Meanwhile, Just Dance 2016 also got some promotion, with five ads running throughout October.
Sony’s big push for Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection helps prepare for the release of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End next year. The company accounted for over five percent of the overall ad-spend for the month between the game ads and promoting its PlayStation Vue game streaming service, even though it’s available in limited markets right now.
Finally, GungHo made the bottom part of the top spenders list, but still managed to gain good numbers with its “Subway Fight” ad for Puzzle & Dragons, which aired over 2,000 times in October with a 5.35 percent share of ad spending for the month.
November’s list will probably look very similar. With the upcoming releases of Call of Duty Black Ops III and Rise of the Tomb Raider, Activision and Microsoft will probably be in the top five again as we draw closer to the holiday.
