Overwolf Ads, a global owned-and-operated gaming media platform, today (17th September, 2026) announced the launch of In-Game Audience Map, the industry’s only media planning tool that enables advertisers to identify exactly where their target audiences play across more than 5,000 major game titles - including Fortnite, Roblox, and more - and understand the potential reach available within each environment.

Debuting at IAB PlayFronts 2026, In-Game Audience Map enables planners to enter target audience demographics from existing media briefs, including segments such as "parents of young children" and "in-market SUV buyers". The platform then maps those audiences across the gaming ecosystem, providing data that shows exactly where and what games these audiences play.  

The product is powered by Gamer Grid, Overwolf's first-party audience data platform. Because Gamer Grid captures deterministic signals based on real-time gameplay behaviour, hardware, and content consumption, it is currently the only platform in the world capable of offering advertisers this level of transparent, scalable in-game data across the biggest titles. Behavioural segments are continuously refreshed using signals including game played, game genre, in-game purchases, user hardware peripherals, playtime session duration, frequency, and more. Demographic, purchase, and lifestyle data from third-party providers can be layered onto these signals across categories including QSR, CPG, automotive, entertainment, technology, finance, pharma, and more. The Audience Map is now live across eight markets including the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands.

The launch comes as brand investment in gaming accelerates. Overwolf's direct brand deals are up 32% year-on-year, with McDonald's, The J.M. Smucker Co., Universal Pictures, Paramount, Logitech, Samsung, and Amazon returning for renewal campaigns in 2026. Historically, gaming has been sold as an audience category to target rather than a media environment to plan against. Sixty percent of the US population plays digital games, and 3.4 billion people play worldwide yet gaming continues to receive a disproportionately small share of global media investment, according to dentsu's State of Gaming research.

"Nobody plans against 'socialiers', 'entertainmenters', or 'TV people'," said Nathan Lindberg, VP of global brand partnerships at Overwolf. "Yet gamers are looked at as a monolithic group and not as the high attention platform it is to reach their target consumer. Now, a media planner, brand manager or programmatic buyer can type 'parents of young children', 'luxury shoppers', or 'Halloween candy buyers' into the In-Game Audience Map and see exactly where those consumers play and at what scale. It’s now easier than ever to put gaming on the plan the same way you'd put any other channel on the plan."

By overlaying CCPA and GDPR compliant rich demographic, lifestyle, and purchasing signals onto deterministic gameplay data, advertisers can capture high-attention audiences who are actively spending money. For example, take the parents of young children. Gamer Grid data identifies 3.75 million US parent players across the Overwolf platform, approximately 1.9 million of whom play after 6 p.m., with 25% having midnight to 6 a.m. as their primary gaming window. One in six plays more than 35 hours per week.

Among parents with children ages 0 to 3, 53% are in-market for a new mortgage and 26% are in-market for a vehicle, with minivan intent indexing 1.9 times higher than the average US consumer. 67% identify as coffee lovers, with Starbucks frequent spending indexing 1.5 times the US average. 61% report child-influenced shopping, with online children's stores and baby-product retailers indexing 2.0 times the US average.

"Media buyers are beginning to understand gaming is not an audience. It is the highest-attention media environment in your consumer's day," said Shahar Sorek, CMO at Overwolf. "The moment planners can see their own customers inside it quickly, the conversation stops being about gaming and starts being about reach, frequency, attention, and outcomes. That is how gaming will move out of the 10% experiment budget and into the core plan in the years ahead."

Overwolf

Overwolf allows advertisers to reach and engage gamers at scale during playtime across the world’s biggest games such as Fortnite, Minecraft, League of Legends and hundreds more. Trusted by global brands and agencies such as P&G, Dr Peppe...

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