70% of the Audience is Gaming. But Only 3% of Media Spend Shows Up There

I was at Marketecture LIVE 2026 Conference earlier this week and walked away with a lot to think about.

The brand vs. performance debate made its usual appearance, just wearing different clothes depending on the session. Attribution, measurement, platform incentives, it kept coming up in different forms. But the question underneath never really changes: what are your outcomes, and how do you value them? It was never really settled. It just keeps getting recycled. I don't think we're close to a clean answer, but I appreciated that people were at least asking it honestly.

The gaming sessions were my favorite part of the day though.

Over 70% of the U.S. population are gamers. Not a niche, not a subculture, a majority. The average player puts in more than 10 hours a week. And gaming still sits at around 3% of total media spend. The gap is hard to ignore.

The panel was pretty honest about why. It's mostly perception, and the natural inertia of the buy side. People build careers on channels that work, that have frameworks their CMOs already understand. Gaming still conjures the wrong image in a lot of people's minds, even as the actual audience looks more and more like everyone.

The reframe that stuck with me: stop leading with "gaming" and start leading with the audience. Walk in talking about reach and demographics and you're in a real media planning conversation. Lead with the channel and you've lost the room before you've said anything interesting. You're not asking someone to believe in a new medium. You're showing them an audience they already want, and then telling them where that audience actually lives.

If these conversations resonated with you, the discussion continues later this March at the 4A’s Decisions 2026 Conference in Boston. If you’re attending, book a time to connect with me there. I would love to continue the conversation around audience-first media strategies and the growing role of mobile gaming in the mix.