An implicit research methodology to evaluate advertising effectiveness in Esports streaming based on viewers’ gaze, cognitive and emotional responses

The video game industry has experienced an exponential increase during the last decade. Some gaming events have even become major sporting events worldwide, compared in magnitude to sport mega events (Hamari & Sjoblom, 2017). This new discipline is called esports, which refers to a different concept: esports players sit in front of a computer instead of utilizing physical capacity or effort, which is characteristic of traditional sports (Grao, 2017). Although integration into an academicscientific field of electronic sports is still in its infancy (Faust &Griffiths, 2013; Hamari &Sjoblom, 2017), there is consensus regarding the significant business being generated (Newzoo, 2019). The main channel of esports is the internet, as all esports events are transmitted via streaming on the internet (Mirón &Lago, 2017). Thus, a live esports broadcast is usually followed by millions of viewers (mainly young audiences). For instance, the peak of viewers of the League of Legends World Championship in 2018 was USD 205 million, surpassing traditional sports events such as the Super Bowl (USD 98.2 million) or Wimbledon (USD 56 million) (https://escharts.com). Although these figures are still far from FIFA’s World Cup viewers (USD 3.572 billions), many large soccer teams are trying to enter the esports market right now due to the incredible growth experienced in recent years (Wolf, 2016). The ability of esports to reach young audiences has made brands recognize esports as a new penetration channel. This explains why advertising revenue was USD 155.3 million in 2017 and has increased to USD 189.2 million in 2019 (Newzoo, 2019). However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no research methodologies developed to understand the effectiveness of advertisements in the esports industry defining effectiveness as the ability to achieve the desired or expected effect over the brand experience (Moreno & Martín, 2016; Zajonc, 1968). Esports is still a very young market that is evolving very quickly, leading to the necessity of further investigation on the effectiveness of ads, which will be approached herein.