Gaming on YouTube: a marketer’s best friend

3 mins to read

Gaming on YouTube: a marketer’s best friend

It’s no secret that gaming rules the roost on YouTube—look no further than PewDiePie’s 29 million subscribers for proof that gaming and YouTube go together like peanut butter and jelly.

What might be surprising, though, is that these hordes of gaming fans don’t just visit YouTube for gaming highlights or snarky comment threads but as a vital part of their buying decision lifecycle. In fact, 92% of gamers turn to YouTube to help them research a title before purchase.

GAMING CONTENT AND PURCHASE BEHAVIOR

In a gamer’s decision buying lifecycle, YouTube plays an indispensable role in molding the likelihood of purchase. From the first announcement trailer for a game, YouTube is there every step of the way—particularly prior to a title’s launch. In fact, 60% of total viewership of game-related content occurs before the game’s release, with 9 out of 10 videos coming from brand-released sources.

Wouldn’t it be nice if this viewership correlated with sales? It does! Viewership of top gaming content showed a positive correlation of .99 with sales after a gaming title’s release. Moreover, a positive correlation of .95 was found as far as five months before title release. Talk about staying power!

The next time you see a video game trailer on YouTube, pay close attention to how it performs. Millions of gamers are watching it along with you—but with their wallets in mind.