How to Measure the ROI of Branded Games

Posted by Christina on 14.04.2026

Engagement is only part of the story

It’s never been more important for marketing teams to prove the value, and impact, of what they do. Campaigns, events, and always-on activity are all under increasing scrutiny, and surface-level metrics just don’t cut it anymore.

Impressions, reach, or email opens might show that something was seen. But they don’t show whether it worked, or what it contributed to the business. To earn credibility, secure budget, and unlock future investment, marketers need to connect their work to real outcomes.

Branded games already go further than that.

They don’t just generate visibility, they create active participation. You can track how many people played, how long they stayed, and how often they came back. For many brands, that level of engagement is a meaningful and valuable measure of success.

But for teams under pressure to prove ROI, engagement is only part of the story.

Branded games go beyond engagement and drive measurable business impact

For marketers who need to justify spend, understanding how to measure performance is what turns branded games from a fun campaign into a strategic one.

Strong marketing teams don’t just report on activity, they connect the dots:

Activity → engagement → conversion → revenue
Campaign → customer behaviour → business outcome

Let’s break it down properly.

👉 How branded games create measurable marketing value

👉 How to measure ROI of branded games (by use case)

The underestimated power of voluntary attention

In most digital environments, attention is rented. You pay for an impression, hope for a click, and measure viewability. But very little of that guarantees meaningful brand engagement.

Interactive branded games operate differently; they invite participation.

When a customer chooses to play your game, they’re actively deciding to spend time with your brand. That time isn’t passive scroll exposure, it’s focused interaction where they’re playing, competing, and winning.

When this happens, the brand isn’t background noise; it’s the whole environment. And that’s important because it builds brand familiarity.

Research into interactive advertising shows that participatory formats (like games) improve engagement and brand recall compared to non-interactive ads. Studies on branded games have also demonstrated positive effects on brand recall and brand attitude, driven by the immersive nature of gameplay.

Cognitive research supports this too: active processing leads to stronger memory retention than passive exposure.

When customers engage with a branded game, they encode the experience differently. The brand becomes associated with a feeling of fun, challenge, or reward. Which is a lot more memorable than a simple marketing message, ad, or email.

That is brand building. And unlike traditional awareness activity, it’s measurable.

1. Turning attention into active engagement

Most marketing captures attention for a few seconds, if you’re lucky. Games hold it for minutes.

In fact, digital game campaigns often see average player engagement times of 15+ minutes.

Instead of a fleeting impression, you’re measuring time, interaction, and repeat behaviour. That gives you a much clearer picture of how deeply people are interacting with your brand.

Key signals include:

Unique participants
Total game plays
Average engagement time
Completion rate
Repeat plays
Total cumulative engagement time. (We call this TAPET; there’s more on this later)

That final metric is particularly powerful.

If 8,000 participants spend an average of 15 minutes playing, that’s over 2,000 hours of active brand engagement, something traditional formats simply can’t replicate.

Proof in practice:

Molton Brown generated over 11 years of total brand engagement time with a month-long festive game campaign
Northlink Ferries saw 59 plays per player and 2 hours average engagement in a 4-week period

This is measurable attention, and a far stronger awareness story than impressions alone.

“The engagement was incredible. We’ve never seen numbers like that before! 15% of people played it over 50 times, which is just amazing."

2. Turning engagement into data

Engagement is valuable. But when it leads to data, it becomes actionable.

Branded games create a natural value exchange. People play first, enjoy the experience, and then choose to share their details, typically to submit their score to a leaderboard or unlock rewards. At that point, they can also opt in to your marketing.

This works across both digital campaigns and physical environments, from online activations to trade shows and live events, where capturing data in a natural, engaging way is often a challenge.

Because the data capture comes after the value, the interaction feels earned, not forced. This leads to higher-quality data, stronger conversion rates, and more meaningful ongoing relationships.

Instead of interrupting someone for their details, you’re rewarding them for their attention.

Key signals include:

Number of leads
Total marketing opt-ins
Play-to-opt-in conversion rate
Cost per lead

Proof in practice:

Frankie & Benny’s captured 16,000 new CRM contacts
Social Fuel achieved an 86% marketing opt-in rate
Sleeping Giant Media generated 358 new qualified contacts

This is where games for marketing move from engagement to performance.

👉 Want to see how this works in practice? Explore our lead generation case study.

"The game was great at being addictive, fun, challenging and awesome, helping us to spread that ‘find the joy’ message whilst being fully branded to remind the audience it was from the Giants!"

3. Turning engagement into action

Branded games don’t just engage, they motivate players to take action.

Whether it’s unlocking a reward, competing for a prize, or progressing through a challenge, gameplay creates a natural incentive to take the next step.

That momentum doesn’t have to stop when the game ends.

Through post-game messaging (usually delivered via the thank you panel), you can guide players towards a clear next action. Whether that’s redeeming an offer, downloading an app, exploring a product page, or making a booking or purchase.

Because the player has already invested time and attention, they’re far more likely to follow through. It’s not a cold call to action, it’s a continuation of the experience.

Key signals include:

Click-through rate (CTR)
App installs
Voucher redemptions
Conversion rate
Revenue generated

Proof in practice:

Hopdoddy reduced cost per app install by up to 80% and drove a 4–5x uplift in downloads
DFDS generated a record-breaking ROI, with 9,000 opt-ins and strong revenue from in-game offers
Frankie & Benny’s campaign drove 1,000 table bookings!

This is where the commercial impact of branded games becomes undeniable.

“We could spend more money on ads or give away free food and be less efficient. What we’ve aligned on is that gamification, with a strong fun factor, is something we want to keep as part of our overall strategy, specifically as a lever for loyalty.”

4. Creating reasons to come back

Most campaigns are one-off interactions. Branded games for marketing are designed for repeat behaviour.

Leaderboards, prize mechanics, achievements, and rewards give players a reason to return, turning what could have been a single interaction into multiple touchpoints within the same campaign.

Instead of hoping someone sees your message again, you’ve actively pulling them back into the experience. This keeps your brand and campaign front of mind for longer, increasing familiarity, recall, and overall impact.

Key signals include:

Repeat play rate
Return visits over time
Loyalty sign-ups
Ongoing engagement

Proof in practice:

Hungry Horse generated 2 million game plays from 100k players, with an average player engagement time of nearly 30 minutes!
Quidco delivered brand partnership and player rewards to their audience across three seasonal games with sensational results; over 3.5 million games played!
Exclusive sneaker brand Footpatrol used two games to build community, inspire customer loyalty, and drive engagement with their app, generating over 300,000 game plays from 85,000 players.

This is where games outperform traditional marketing formats, not just by capturing attention, but by sustaining it across the entire campaign lifecycle.

“It’s not just the ‘magic’ that the games add to our campaigns – it’s the quality, consistency, and reliability of Peek & Poke and everyone on the team. Those are the things we look for in our suppliers and we look forward to collaborating again in future.”

How to measure ROI of branded games (by use case)

The way you measure ROI depends on what you’re trying to achieve, and where your campaign sits.

Whether you’re running a live event, a seasonal campaign, or a performance-driven activation, branded games give you clear ways to measure impact.

Here’s how that breaks down in practice.

1. Attention value (for seasonal and awareness campaigns)

For brand or engagement-led campaigns, attention is the most valuable currency.

Instead of estimating reach, you can quantify it. You’re no longer guessing how long people might have seen your brand, you’re measuring how long they actively chose to engage with it.

However, total engagement time on its own can be misleading if not properly contextualised.

For example, a campaign might generate one year of total engagement time. But if that’s across one million players, the average engagement per person is only around 30 seconds.

That’s where a more useful metric comes in: Total Average Player Engagement Time (TAPET).

TAPET is calculated by dividing total engagement time by the number of players, giving you a clear view of how long each person actually spent engaging with your game, and your brand.

This makes it far easier to:

Compare campaign performance
Benchmark against other branded games
Understand the true quality of attention

In practice, this metric highlights just how different branded games are from other digital marketing formats.

We typically see clients achieve average engagement times (TAPET) of 15 minutes or more in their digital campaigns. A level of sustained attention that traditional marketing struggles to match.

2. Measuring impact at trade shows and physical events

At trade shows and events, measuring success is hard to do and often imprecise. Footfall is estimated, conversations are anecdotal, and it’s difficult to quantify how many people truly engaged with your stand.

Branded games change that. They give you a clear, trackable measure of interaction; how many people didn’t just pass by, but chose to stop, play, and engage.

Key signals include:

Total game plays (a proxy for stand engagement)
Unique players
Number of competition entrants

If you’re capturing data on-site, you can take this further by measuring:

Total leads collected
Cost per lead (CPL)

It bridges the gap between brand experience and measurable performance, something most event activations struggle to do.

✨ Learn more about measuring event ROI

3. Cost per engagement (a different way to think about CPA)

Not every campaign is designed to drive immediate conversions or even capture leads.

For seasonal moments, brand campaigns, or trade shows, the goal is often engagement, getting people to actively spend time with your brand.

In those cases, traditional CPA models don’t quite fit. Instead, you can look at: Cost per unique player = campaign cost ÷ total unique participants

This tells you how efficiently you’re driving active engagement, not just passive exposure.

Example:

Campaign cost: £3,000
Unique players: 12,000
Cost per player: £0.25

In many cases, cost per engaged player is a more meaningful metric than cost per click, because it reflects real attention, not just intent.

When that engagement lasts minutes, not seconds, the value becomes even clearer. Now compare that to traditional paid media. 😉

4. Cost efficiency (for lead generation and installs)

For performance-led campaigns, ROI is often best understood through efficiency.

Compare your branded game results against existing benchmarks:

Cost per lead (CPL)
Cost per install (CPI)
Conversion rate

For example:

Paid social CPL: £4.80
Branded game CPL: £1.10

Or:

Standard landing page conversion rate: 4%
Branded game conversion rate: 28%

5. Revenue-based ROI (for sales-driven campaigns)

If your campaign is tied directly to bookings, sales, or redemptions, ROI can be calculated in the most straightforward way:

ROI = (revenue generated – campaign cost) ÷ campaign cost

When gameplay is connected to voucher codes, tracked links, or ecommerce journeys, this becomes a direct and commercially undeniable measure of success.

If you’re planning a campaign, our friendly team can help you map out the metrics and expected ROI.

Results that are easy to track

Measurement doesn’t need to be complex. Every Peek & Poke game includes an in-game analytics dashboard, giving you clear visibility into how people are interacting with your campaign.

You can track:

Plays and unique participants
Player engagement time
Completion and drop-off rates
Total engagement time (TAPET)
Repeat interaction
Marketing opt-ins

Here’s an example of what you’ll see:

If you’re capturing leads, that data is securely stored and ready to export into your CRM or marketing stack.

And if deeper attribution is needed, that can be layered in. Voucher codes, ecommerce tracking, and CRM integrations can all be connected via webhook (using tools like Make or Zapier) so gameplay can be tied directly to wider marketing performance.

Platforms like Google Analytics can also be integrated, giving you full visibility across your campaign ecosystem.

The result is simple: whether you need light-touch reporting or full-funnel attribution, the data is there when you need it.

“Peek & Poke felt more like a strategic partner than a supplier. They understood that engagement alone isn’t success, it has to translate into real behaviour and revenue, and built a solution that reflected that.”

Turning ideas into measurable campaigns

Whether you’re exploring branded games for the first time, or looking to get more from an upcoming campaign, the opportunity is the same: turn engagement into something you can measure.

At Peek & Poke, we work with brands to shape game concepts around marketing objectives. Whether that’s engagement, data capture, or commercial outcomes, and make sure the right tracking is in place from the start.

So if you’re thinking about:

A Christmas or seasonal campaign
An event activation
A lead generation push
Or simply a new way to engage your audience

Our friendly team can help you shape the idea, and show you exactly how it can be measured. Because the most effective campaigns don’t just engage, they prove their value.

👉 Book a discovery call to get started.

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Let’s build a campaign people want to engage with

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Blog: How to Use Branded Games in Marketing

Learn: How it works

Case study: Molton Brown Perfect Match

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