Visitors To Online Gaming Sites Reaches Almost 217 Million
The number of unique visitors to online gaming sites has reached almost 217 million worldwide – a year-on-year growth of 17% – according to new research from comScore.
Bob Ivins, EVP and managing director of comScore Europe, said: “With one in four internet users visiting a gaming site, playing games online is extremely popular. The fact that these websites are pulling in over a quarter of the total worldwide internet population shows what a global phenomenon gaming has become. The potential of the online gaming arena should be especially appealing for advertisers, as the average online gamer visits a gaming site nine times a month.”
| Regional Breakdown of Top 10 Worldwide Gaming Properties Ranked by Worldwide Unique Visitors, May 2007 vs. May 2006, Total Worldwide, Age 15+ – Home and Work Locations* | ||||
| Property | Total Unique Visitors (000) | |||
| May-06 | May-07 | % Change | ||
| Total Internet: Total Audience | 705,644 | 771,997 | 9.4 | |
| Online Gaming | 185,992 | 216,715 | 16.5 | |
| 1 | Yahoo! Games | 52,969 | 52,796 | -0.3 |
| 2 | MSN Games | 34,915 | 40,335 | 15.5 |
| 3 | MINICLIP.COM | 25,554 | 30,249 | 18.4 |
| 4 | EA Online | 30,525 | 21,220 | -30.5 |
| 5 | Shockwave.com Sites | N/A | 15,689 | N/A |
| 6 | FREEONLINEGAMES.COM | 10,050 | 13,660 | 35.9 |
| 7 | ADDICTINGGAMES.COM | N/A | 13,161 | N/A |
| 8 | RealArcade Sites | 15,950 | 12,520 | -21.5 |
| 9 | Zylom | 7,271 | 12,471 | 71.5 |
| 10 | WildTangent Network | 2,329 | 11,584 | 397.5 |
| * Excludes traffic from public computers such as internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs | ||||
| Source: comScore | ||||
Yahoo! Games was the largest property, attracting 53 million unique visitors. MSN Games followed in second place, having grown by 16% since May 2006 to reach 40 million unique visitors in May 2007. Both properties provide a mixture of strategy, trivia, arcade, and board games, with puzzle and card games proving to be the most popular choices for gamers in both cases.
The fastest-growing Top 10 gaming property was WildTangent Network, a US company that makes online and downloadable games, which grew by 398% year-on-year to attract 11.5 million unique visitors in May 2007. The site also attracted an average 12.2 visits per visitor, notably higher than any of the other top 10 gaming properties.
The popularity of individual properties varied significantly between geographical locations. Yahoo! Games dominated the North American and Asia-Pacific continents, registering 18.7 million and 20.9 million unique visitors respectively.
In Europe however, the Yahoo! property proved to be the fourth-most popular gaming site with 8.6 million unique visitors. MSN Games, the second-most popular gaming site in the world, was more consistent in geographical take-up, proving to be either the most or the second-most popular site in every geographical location.
A recent report from Yankee Group predicted worldwide in-game advertising expenditures (fixed product placement/static ads and dynamic ads) will grow to $971.3 million by 2011 (see In-Game Ad Market Growing At Exponential Rate).
Meanwhile, Nielsen Interactive Entertainment’s third annual Active Gamer Benchmark study said that two thirds of US online gamers are female (see Two Thirds Of US Online Gamers Are Female).