The relationship between games advertising and sales

Generation Media looks at the year-on-year percentage change in video games advertising and sales of boxed titles.

The way in which consumers are able to purchase games and consoles in recent years has gone beyond just retail.

As such, it has become difficult to understand what is really going on with game sales. The same can be said of games and consoles advertising.

At face value, there is a direct correlation between the year-on-year decline in games and consoles TV advertising, and the decline in boxed sales (UKIE/ Chart-Track data). However, what we don’t see represented is online gaming, subscriptions and DLC.

With this section of the market taking greater prevalence, we would expect online advertising to be on the increase. However, as the right-hand bar demonstrates, this is also tracking significantly behind 2011 for the year-to-date.

But it’s important to note that the entire online advertising market is not being captured. It is also much more difficult to monitor this activity, which is why online advertising data has only been provided from January until the end of February (as opposed to January until the end of March for TV).

Supplied byGeneration Media