In the immor­tal words of music indus­try dar­ling Tay­lor Swift, “the play­ers gonna play, play, play, play, play.” She prob­a­bly wasn’t talk­ing about the video game indus­try, but she might has well have been: Video games are huge­ly impor­tant source of enter­tain­ment for men ages 18 to 34. At the same time, video game con­soles have his­tor­i­cal­ly been dif­fi­cult devices on which to reach con­sumers. They will, how­ev­er, become increas­ing­ly impor­tant to adver­tis­ers as they become more func­tion­al and, there­fore, pow­er­ful. But how can brands take advan­tage of this bur­geon­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty?

Eng­lish couch pota­toes, rejoice: Domino’s is report­ed­ly work­ing with Microsoft to enable Xbox One play­ers to order piz­zas from their con­soles.

Per the Sun­day Times, the part­ner­ship is due to be announced in Novem­ber and is “thought to be the first time British con­sumers will be able to buy a phys­i­cal prod­uct via the Xbox.”

Accord­ing to a rep for Domino’s in the U.S., it is a UK-spe­cif­ic effort and he is not aware of any plans for a com­pa­ra­ble deal in the U.S.

Nev­er­the­less, the Domino’s‑Microsoft part­ner­ship is note­wor­thy as an exam­ple of a brand mak­ing itself vis­i­ble to con­sumers on yet anoth­er device.

And, as con­soles become more func­tion­al, they will play increas­ing­ly impor­tant roles in the liv­ing room as sources of enter­tain­ment beyond games. And, as a result, their rel­a­tive impor­tance to mar­keters also increas­es.

“There’s a lot of talk that we may not be cable sub­scribers [in the future], but data sub­scribers,” said Bri­an Blau, research direc­tor at research and advi­so­ry firm Gart­ner, point­ing to devices like Ama­zon Fire TV and PlaySta­tion TV.

Despite exist­ing flaws, Blau said these devices will only get bet­ter over time as con­soles turn into “much more pow­er­ful graph­ic com­put­ers.”

Brands & Video Consoles: Who’s Playing?

The Domino’s‑Microsoft pact is cer­tain­ly not the first brand­ed part­ner­ship with­in the gam­ing – or even con­sole – indus­try.

Nis­san and Sony, for exam­ple, have teamed up mul­ti­ple times for Nis­san PlaySta­tion GT Acad­e­my, a gamer-to-pro­fes­sion­al-rac­er com­pe­ti­tion that the brands say uses “the vir­tu­al world of the Gran Tur­is­mo 6 game to unearth real-world rac­ing tal­ent.”

In a sim­i­lar vein, in a tweet in May, Nin­ten­do announced it was work­ing with Mer­cedes-Benz on an inte­gra­tion with­in Mario Kart 8 on Wii U.

Reps for Nis­san, Sony and Nin­ten­do did not respond to requests for com­ment.

Also in May, Microsoft announced a mul­ti-year part­ner­ship with the NFL to give Xbox One users “exclu­sive inter­ac­tive NFL expe­ri­ences,” as well as an ESPN app.

And, of course, there are all those Mad­den games.

Count­less oth­er part­ner­ships exist and it’s no won­der: dri­ven by strong mobile gam­ing and video game con­sole and soft­ware sales, Gart­ner fore­casts the world­wide video game mar­ket­place will reach $111 bil­lion by 2015.

Gamers: A Difficult, But Valuable Audience

While ads have a long his­to­ry in the video game indus­try, con­soles have his­tor­i­cal­ly been one of the most dif­fi­cult plat­forms for adver­tis­ers because “con­soles are real­ly a male-ori­ent­ed prod­uct and tend to skew young to younger mid­dle age,” Blau said. That’s in part because cer­tain game gen­res like shoot­er, rac­ing and sports are pop­u­lar with that demo­graph­ic and “this is a tough audi­ence to reach…and the audi­ence might not be as accept­ing [of ads],” he added.

(In a case study, Think with Google echoes Blau’s state­ment, not­ing, on aver­age, 18- to 34-year-olds spend more time per view in gam­ing than in any oth­er con­tent seg­ment.)

And, much to their wives’/girlfriends’ (or moth­ers’) dis­may, they are a cap­tive audi­ence on these devices, which makes them prime tar­gets for adver­tis­ers.

“It’s not like the web,” Blau said. “It’s not like mobile apps [either] where there’s a lot of in and out and back and forth. The ad oppor­tu­ni­ties are lim­it­ed [on con­soles].”

Can Brands Reach Gamers?

So how does a brand reach these cap­tive con­sumers? They have sev­er­al options.

One way brands cur­rent­ly con­nect with con­sumers on con­soles is through sports games in which “big mon­ey is exchanged” for spon­sor­ships. That includes con­tracts with teams, sta­di­ums, adver­tis­ers and the like and heavy inte­gra­tion, Blau said. It’s a sim­i­lar con­cept with rac­ing games that have deals with car man­u­fac­tur­ers.

And then there are brand­ed apps like the upcom­ing offer­ing from Domino’s, as well as brands like Net­flix, YouTube and GoPro.

What’s more, con­soles also have ads with­in their main inter­faces.

And then there are brand­ed games.

But, what­ev­er the strat­e­gy, in order for a brand to suc­cess­ful­ly reach con­sumers on con­soles, the con­tent has to fit with­in the game and it has to res­onate with that audi­ence.

“The best advice is that brands real­ly need to find how their cus­tomers cross over with games, and then make sure there is a real­ly sol­id tie-in between the mes­sage and the video game, which could be the game sit­u­a­tion, con­tent or user inter­face,” Blau said. “The tie-in is the most pow­er­ful way to have an impact with game play­ers and if that tie-in is opti­mized it has the best chance of hav­ing mean­ing for the game play­er, ver­sus ad con­tent that is tan­gen­tial­ly relat­ed or not relat­ed at all and then it becomes obvi­ous that the ad is out of place.”

Marketing Challenges: Game Over?

The abil­i­ty of a brand to reach con­sumers on con­soles is fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by com­pet­ing inter­ests among all involved par­ties.

“There are four par­ties when it comes to hav­ing suc­cess­ful ads in games: the adver­tis­er, the game devel­op­er, the game play­er and the con­sole mak­er. Every­body has a say so in this and get­ting them all to line up is real­ly dif­fi­cult. It’s a good oppor­tu­ni­ty, but it’s not easy things to get right,” Blau said.

Gamers don’t like ads and devel­op­ers don’t want to show ads because they “want to show their art in its purest form,” and adver­tis­ers want to take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ty that exists with­out upset­ting any­one.

“There are a lot of pieces and it’s a com­pli­cat­ed busi­ness,” Blau said. “That’s why it hasn’t real­ly hit its stride. And the same sit­u­a­tion will con­tin­ue for a long time.”

And because of all the exist­ing chal­lenges, Blau said it will only change if brands make a big push.

“I think it will hap­pen more because con­sumers are more accept­ing and games are hav­ing their hey­day,” Blau said. “We’re going to see more, but it will be inter­est­ing to watch the devel­op­ment because of the chal­lenges.”