With the festive season in full swing, advertisers have not only increased marketing spends for the digital medium but seems to have set aside a budget for the gaming genre. According to Mobile Game Advertising 2022 report by InMobi, 75% of the country’s top brands have been advertising on mobile game apps for more than a year now, thereby recording a two-fold increase in gaming ad-spends.
Benefitting from this trend is game streaming platform Rooter which claims to have recorded five times increase in revenue from advertisements during the festive season this year as opposed to last year. “90% of brands across categories have set aside marketing budgets for gaming as the sports genre becomes more expensive with every year. Furthermore, brands have realised that gaming is much more immersive than a short form video or any other format,” Piyush Kumar, founder and CEO, Rooter, told BrandWagon Online.
The company expects to clock Rs 48.4 crore as gross revenue by the end of FY23. Of this, it claims to post Rs three crore from brand monetisation per month. In the last six months, the platform claims to have worked with over 200 brands across categories. Brands such as Airtel, Pizza Hut, Flipkart, Intel, HP, TVS Motor, among others, have advertised with Rooter.
The platform which launched a video-advertisements feature in May, expects this revenue stream to overtake its main revenue stream – performance marketing – by the end of FY23. “This year, advertising as a revenue stream is going to be bigger than performance marketing. Display advertising is expected to account for 40% of the overall revenue while performance marketing will contribute nearly 30% to the overall revenue,” he added. For Rooter, advertising became a major revenue model for the company as the platform saw 100% growth in its monthly active users to 16.6 million in the past three quarters.
The platform has five main revenue streams – advertising, performance marketing, influencer marketing, rooter shop, and sponsorship and events. Interestingly, brands opt for Rooter for a full-marketing funnel that includes not just placement of ads but also choose to sponsor some of our Intellectual Properties (IPs) or opt for influencer marketing as a bundle. For advertisements, Rooter charges anywhere between 80 cents to $1.2 cost per impression (CPM). Furthermore, Kumar stated that the platform enjoys high conversion rates which attracts brands. “We record nearly 1.25% cost per rating point (CPR),” Kumar highlighted. Cost per rating point (CPR) is the cost of an advertising campaign, relative to the rating points delivered.
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