Copyright Variety
With the rise of “cozy gaming” culture, more gaming companies are developing titles and products specifically targeted at women than ever before. But while the gaming industry itself has gotten better at acknowledging the chunk of its consumer community that is made up of female gamers (whose interests range from “Call of Duty” to “Hello Kitty Island Adventure”), it is advertisers and media buyers interested in gaming who aren’t fully grasping the market. “Women are just underserved in being targeted as gamers, generally, from an advertising lens,” Gabrielle Heyman, mobile game giant Zynga‘s vice president of global brand sales and partnerships, tells Variety. “When brands are getting into gaming, I think there’s still a lot of this bias around, oh, we’re trying to reach, like, Gen Alpha and Gen Z men in this category.” Heyman adds: “However, because there are so many large casual gaming companies interacting with brands like Zynga and King, the people who are buying and planning media for that category are actually probably more advanced than some other categories at knowing that their audience is playing games.” Zynga’s “Words With Friends” launched an ad campaign starring “The Real Housewives” alums Dorinda Medley and Dorit Kemsley, which aired on Bravo last fall. The teamup came on the heels of a March 2024 Zynga and YouGov study that showed, in the case of female gamers, 59% have watched cable channels like Hallmark, Bravo and Lifetime in the past week, and 61% are more likely to say Bravo is their favorite channel. “There is a really interesting trend, generally speaking, of celebs doing mobile game ads,” Heyman says. “Courtney Cox and Lisa Kudrow are in a really cute, funny ad for ‘Royal Kingdom.’ More and more, we’re definitely seeing celebs involved with these games, and the celeb that they’re choosing to be in the game is definitely that celeb that vibes with that Millennial and Gen X woman.” That’s because “the sweet spot for the casual gamer is definitely the Millennial/Gen X woman,” according to Heyman, who adds that Boomers are now “one of the fastest growing segments of gamers.” Additionally, Zynga’s research finds that female gamers are often the head of the household (75%), moms (65%) and the primary grocery shoppers in their homes (72%). According to the mobile gaming company, these gamers spent between $5,000 and $10,000 shopping online in the last six months, and 62% of those purchases were mobile in-app purchases with a retailer (43% higher than average). “The female gamer is just really counter to the outdated stereotypes because they consider themselves ambitious and career-focused and style conscious,” Heyman says. “So all of those advertisers who are trying to reach those types of women on those channels might be missing an opportunity by not looking at casual gaming, too.” This goes both ways: Heyman says gaming companies should be advertising their games on women-oriented channels like Bravo, Lifetime and Hallmark, not just within other games — and brands advertising products and services to women consumers should be buying up in-game advertising to reach female gamers rather than focusing the majority of resources on connected TV ad buys. “I think game companies have finally been like, oh, we don’t need to just buy ads on other games to drive players in our user acquisition strategy,” Heyman says. “What I often says is, the elephant in the room, specifically for CTV buyers — and they don’t want to admit it, certainly not the streamers — is, what are you doing when you’re on the couch? You’ve got your phone next to you. So I think, finally, mobile game companies are like, oh, clearly this is a really great time to be advertising. Primetime for gaming is primetime for television — those evening hours.” Heyman says, ultimately, “one beautiful thing about gaming companies, and specifically mobile gaming companies, is they don’t put people into buckets like woman/male or female/male.” She continues, “The only psychographic that really matters to game companies is that you’re a gamer and that you want to play games.”
