This week, exclusive on Variety and unveiled live at IAB PlayFronts 2026, Overwolf Ads launched the In-Game Audience Map: a free tool that shows brands exactly where their audience is playing, across 5,000+ of the world's biggest games.
Tell it who you want to reach, "parents of young children," "luxury shoppers," whatever's already in your brief, and it shows you where and how your audiences play.
It's a direct answer to a problem the industry keeps citing: gaming reaches 67% of Americans every week, yet gets 2.4% of media spend. IAB CEO David Cohen has called it the single biggest mismatch between attention and investment in media today, and the reason isn't demand. It's that most buyers have never had a reliable way to find their audience inside a game, let alone measure what happens after they're reached.
How It Works
The determined audience runs on deterministic first-party signals: game played, hardware, purchases and playtime, pulled from Overwolf's Gamer Grid audience data platform and 113M+ monthly players.
A generated audience mapping arrives within days and includes information like:
- What games your audience plays
- Live trending data on session length and gender split
- Gaming title recommendations matched to your audience
One example from the data: among parents of children aged 0-3, 53% are in-market for a mortgage and 26% for a vehicle, with minivan purchase intent indexing 1.9x the average US consumer. That's the kind of signal a media plan built on demographics alone never surfaces.
Why Now
"Media buyers are beginning to understand gaming is not an audience," said Shahar Sorek, CMO of Overwolf. "It is the highest-attention media environment in your consumer's day."
Nathan Lindberg, VP of Global Brand Partnerships, put it in planning terms: "Now, a media planner, brand manager or programmatic buyer can type 'parents of young children' and see exactly where those consumers play."
The demand is already there. Direct brand deals at Overwolf are up 32% year-on-year, and 2026 renewals include McDonald's, The J.M. Smucker Co., Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Logitech, Samsung Electronics and Amazon.
Build Your Own Map
See exactly where your audience is playing: ow-ai.overwolf.com/public-tools/audience-map.
Read the full Variety coverage: In-Game Audience Map on Variety.
About Overwolf Ads
Overwolf is a world-leading gaming platform empowering brands and advertisers to reach over 113 million monthly gamers across hundreds of the world's biggest titles and premium gaming websites.
Ranked by Comscore as the #2 Biggest US Gaming Property, winner of ADWEEK's Top Ad Tech Company, Digiday's Best Gaming Ad Tech and The Drum's Best Platform/Tech Partner of the Year, Overwolf is trusted by global brands and agencies such as Universal Pictures, H&R Block, Netflix, Dodge, Nissan, KFC, WPP, Dentsu, Havas, The Trade Desk and more.
For more information on Overwolf, visit www.overwolf.com/ads.