There’s no doubt about it: These days, gaming is huge. Formerly niche, gamer-focused social media platforms like Twitch and Discord have exploded in popularity, hit movies and TV shows (think Last of Us) based on video games have mass appeal, and the video game industry is estimated to be worth a staggering $214 billion dollars in 2025.
The Always-On Gamers, too, are legion: According to Resonate’s AI-powered data engine, rAI, there are over 130M of them. Given these numbers and the specific preferences of gamers in comparison to other groups of consumers, it makes sense to tailor your marketing strategy to their needs, values, and motivations, no matter what industry you’re in. Better still for marketers in the Digital Age, this group isn’t just online often: Many of them want personalized advertisements and will take actions like sharing digital cookies to ensure this result.
Here, we’ll take a deep dive into the Always-On Gamers—one of the audiences featured in the Resonate 2025 State of the Consumer Report. You’ll learn who they are as consumers and how you can successfully market to them.
Who Are the Always-On Gamers?
This audience segment skews younger: 57% of the Always-On Gamers are between the ages of 18 and 44. Their average household income tends to be on the lower end, in keeping with the fact that many of them are still in college, just starting a career, or mid-career. Over half of them (56%) make less than $76,000 per year, with the largest percentage—23%—making between $25K and $50K annually.
Even if they’re not the biggest earners, the Always-On Gamers are major holiday shoppers. A significant 70% shop for Christmas and winter holidays every year, and over 40% buy items and gifts for either Halloween or Valentine’s Day. Interestingly, nearly half consider celebrating themselves to be a special shopping occasion.
Occasions to Shop For:
- Christmas and winter holidays (70%)
- Celebrating myself (48%)
- Valentine’s Day (46%)
- Halloween (43%)
- Back to school (35%)
- Fall/autumn (27%)
- Major federal holiday sales (22%)
What Are Their Consumer Behaviors?
While general wisdom claims the majority of consumers are considering factors like price above brand name, the Always-On Gamers are one group this isn’t completely true for. When they think about making a purchase, the brand of the product or service is the first consideration for a significant 40% of this audience.
Top 3 Purchase Considerations:
- Brand (40%)
- Price (38%)
- Convenience (23%)
When it comes to actually deciding which stores to shop at, however, for the Always-On Gamers, price is still king. Even though this segment takes brand into account when making purchasing decisions, they still opt to shop based on who has the best prices or sales going on. They don’t consider loyalty programs to be a particularly important consideration when selecting retailers. In fact, 25% switched brands on at least one product in the last 12 months and 8% stopped being loyalty to any brand completely.
Retailer Selection Traits:
- Best price/sales (73%)
- Convenient locations (46%)
- Larger product selection (40%)
What Are the Always-On Gamers’ Shopping Behaviors?
This should be unsurprising for a group that consider themselves to be tech first adopters: 59% of the Always-On Gamers shop online as opposed to in store. Furthermore, most of them don’t use pre-written lists, which—you guessed it—means these consumers are also impulse shoppers.
- 30% make impulse purchases
- 40% use coupons
- 59% shop online
This audience is also far more likely than the average consumer to care about staff being knowledgeable, and 20% prioritize doing business with retailers that make returning items easy.
3 Ways to Reach the Always-On Gamers
True to their name, the Always-On Gamers are heavily engaged online. Over 50% are online 20 or more hours each week. Their favorite forms of media include streaming platforms, social media, and Internet videos. Traditional television, often a favorite of marketers, falls a distant fifth for this segment, coming in behind radio.
To learn more about this and two other audiences expected to play a major role in the market this year, read the Resonate 2025 State of the Consumer Report.
Insights to Impact
Here’s how you can use Resonate’s high-performance data and the Resonate Ignite Platform to acquire, grow, and retain Always-On Gamers throughout the full customer lifecycle.
Resonate’s high-performance consumer data and insights align with your business goals across the acquisition, retention, and growth phases and empower you to deliver a measurable impact on KPIs like ROAS, revenue, churn and CLV. To see the Resonate difference for yourself, reach out to one of our data experts today.
