The Emerging Gaming Markets of Brazil and Indonesia: Market Landscape and Best Practices

Do it the Kwai way: Ride on the wave of the booming digital economy of Brazil and Indonesia

@Kwai for Business Go-global guide

Both Brazil’s and Indonesia’s digital economy has been booming. Many marketers have set their eyes on these markets as they have been more lucrative than ever. 

As one of the emerging powerhouses, Brazil boasts 160 million Internet users, and the number is growing rapidly at an annualized rate of 3.3%.

In addition to the enviable size, Brazil’s Internet users are also characterized by two important features: a high average daily Internet usage, and a growth in social media usage. Statistics suggest that the average daily Internet usage in Brazil is approximately 10 hours, far exceeding the global average; the year-over-year growth rate of Brazilian social media users is 14.3%. These 2 features make Brazil an attractive market for marketers looking to expand their business.

Another emerging digital giant is Indonesia, which is home to 200 million Internet users and has an Internet penetration rate at an impressive 73%. Indonesian users tend to spend more time on mobile devices than on PCs, making it an attractive market for mobile marketers.

Average daily Internet usage per user in South America

Source: Datareportal, 2022, Brazil User time: GWI, 2021 Q4

In terms of users, both Brazil and Indonesia have a “date pit” shape representing users’ ages: small at the ends and large in the middle. The largest user age group in both countries is 25-36. While Brazil has a more balanced gender ratio of internet users, Indonesia sees a relatively higher amount of male users.

Both countries have had rapid and unbalanced economic development. As a result, their Internet penetration rates vary from region to region.

As the charts below demonstrate, Brazilian users are mainly concentrated in the northeast and southeast, which both border the Atlantic coastline. Major cities such as Rio and São Paulo are located there and contribute to around 70% of Brazil’s GDP, making them preferred destinations for go-global game-makers. In Indonesia, the high-income population predominantly resides in its capital Jakarta and Java.

For game publishers interested in Brazil and Indonesia, Kwai for Business provides a platform to help them thrive by tapping into Kwai’s growing user base. With services such as splash ads, news feed ads, hashtag challenges, magic tags, and official account certifications, Kwai for Business specializes in helping game-makers navigate the whole process of “awareness-attraction-action-recommendation-private traffic” and meet multiple growth targets such as exposure, conversion, and engagement.

A great example would be the marketing campaign of the game, “The Ants”, in Brazil. Nativex helped spark a viral Kwai hashtag challenge for the game to inspire UGC. It ended successfully with over 400 million total views. Read more about it below.

Best practice: “The Ants” and the Kwai hashtag challenge scored 400 million views

@Nativex

In addition to their forays into developed gaming markets such as Europe, the US, and Japan, Chinese game-makers also look to emerging countries such as Brazil. Nativex was responsible for the marketing campaign in Brazil for The Ants: Underground Kingdom, a game launched by SLG publisher, StarUnion.

“The Ants” is a SLG game that is similar to Clash of Kings but features ants as its little heroes. It simulates the ant ecosystem, with gameplay covering land reclamation, as well as ant colony construction and management.

Based on in-depth research of the game, we decided to introduce a Kwai hashtag challenge for “The Ants” under the theme of “A World Tour With The Ants”. The challenge was designed to inspire UGC, build awareness for the game features and characters, and eventually make the game profitable.

The theme, “A World Tour With The Ants”, aligned with research they found on Brazilian behaviors. They found that the global pandemic has stopped people from traveling, but never stopped their desire to travel. Trending content on Kwai Brazil shows that users there are particularly fond of travel-related topics and have an inclination for sharing travel photos.

Therefore, Nativex used a travel theme and also tapped into Kwai’s “template” services to make the challenge easily accessible. This would encourage players to participate and be creative with their UGC. Videos were not necessary; instead, users could simply upload their travel photos to contribute to the challenge. Among other things, the template services featured mesmerizing animation and camera flash effects, which helped promote the game while giving players a fun and inspirational experience.

Apart from promoting ordinary users’ engagement, we also put forward a “prize pool sharing” incentive to attract KOLs to participate. A total number of 139 influencers voluntarily contributed to the challenge by making hundreds of videos featuring trendy topics, skits, dance, drama, music, and sports.

Nativex managed to tremendously drive up the views of the hashtag challenge by media buying in splash ads and news feed ads as well as offering giveaways to UGC contributors: The challenge was viewed over 220 million times within three days and peaked at 410 million. Thanks to the beautifully localized creatives, the splash ads’ click-through rate reached 8.6% and their spillover effect stood at an impressive 60%.

While the hashtag challenge was running through June, the number of downloads of “The Ants” in Brazil made it to No. 2 worldwide (following the US), further promoting brand awareness and the sustainable growth of the game itself.