Campaign Asia – China is limiting the time minors can play video games to three hours per week—a strict new regulation that is expected to drive up the cost of advertising to the young demographic and upend marketing and influencer strategies in the market.
…Greg Paull, the co-founder and principal of marketing consultancy R3, agreed that gaming influencers will find new channels, but expects resource to “decrease significantly across social media, variety shows and even professional gaming teams”.
“There will be less money and less opportunities for gaming influencers. However, it’s important to remember that before gaming became mainstream, it was a niche industry fueled by die-hard fans. Those fans are not going to disappear. There will be new ways of engagement on the horizon,” Paull said. There’s also a thriving over-18 demographic in gaming that will continue to make it an attractive marketing channel in the short-term, suggested Paull. In China, gamers between the age of 19-30 years account for about 31.7% of all users and 34.8% of paying users, according to Quest Mobile.
“Longer-term, it’s not going to be about eliminating gaming altogether from marketing strategies but taking into consideration that without high-levels of exposure, adoption is going to slow,” Paull added.
