When Millennials Aren’t Gaming, They’re Watching Gaming Content

July 18, 2019

While gamers may be seen as easy targets for ridicule, the gaming industry is nothing to scoff at with 2018 revenues reported at more than $43 billion. Millennials, in particular, are big gamers with a new study [download page] by Nielsen reporting that two-thirds of US Millennials play video games every month.

Past research has shown that gamers do not fall into the stereotypical characterization fed by popular media platforms like television. Millennial gamers are no different. Most (54%) are employed full-time and have an average household income of $58K. Many have children (46%) and are at least college-educated (43%). They are even paying for movie/TV (76%) and music (38%) streaming services.

While Millennials like to play video games, they also like to watch gaming content. Nielsen reports that 7 in 10 (71%) of Millennial gamers use platforms such as YouTube and Twitch to watch gaming video content and online videos about games. In fact, they spend almost 6 hours per week watching this type of content.

Not only that, these individuals are doing their part to support content creators, either through subscriptions (monthly fees paid to creators through the platform where their content is streamed or uploaded) or donations (one-time payments of any value paid to creators).

Millennials are more apt to support creators through donations (an average of $28.73 per month) than they are through subscriptions (average of $25.21 per month). Comparing the generations, Gen Z and Gen X tend to spend more on subscriptions ($28.64 and 29.93 respectively) than Millennials do. Note, these averages do not include those that do not spend anything on supporting creators.

Millennial gamers and their gaming viewing habits have not been lost on advertisers. PwC recently released figures which have video game advertising reaching $1.6 billion this year and growing to $1.9 billion by 2023, while e-sports streaming advertising is also expected to see growth at least through 2023. Additionally, Google research has shown that video and display ads have the highest viewability performance with game content.

About the Data: Nielsen’s The Millennials on Millennials series of reports provide an in-depth look at the media habits of Millennials by Nielsen Millennials. Leveraging a wide variety of Nielsen data sets, the report analyzes topics not only relevant to Millennials but ultimately the wider media landscape including advertising, social media, communication, entertainment spending, technology and more.

45th Parallel Design Ad

Explore More Charts.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This