Future Plc. Debuts TechRadar Gaming to Meet Rising Demand

The U.K.-based media company Future plc. announced Wednesday the official launch of a new title, called TechRadar Gaming (TRG), that aims to transform consumer interest in gaming into robust affiliate and advertising revenue. While enthusiasm for video games has grown steadily for years, the pandemic rapidly accelerated user adoption, said editor in chief Julian Benson, a trend Adweek reported on last August. In the U.S. alone, analysts predict the video game industry will top $95 billion this year, according to research firm Ibis. The world of gaming, whose expensive consoles and recurring subscription fees make for valuable customers, represents a lucrative opportunity for commerce-minded publishers. And while a number of media companies, including BuzzFeed Inc. and BDG, have tied their fates to the rise of affiliate revenue, few rival Future plc. in terms of sheer volume. Using its proprietary tech stack Hawk, which compares the prices of products from sellers across the web in real-time, Future plc. generated $285 million in commerce revenue in 2021, per its end-of-year public filing. During Black Friday weekend in 2020, one TechRadar article explaining where gamers could purchase a PS5 generated $1.5 million in sales order volume. Publishers Level Up Gaming Content Spurred by Advertiser Interest With the launch of TRG, Future plc. is making a calculated effort to more precisely turn that demand into revenue, Benson told Adweek. “The pandemic spurred people to spend far more of their money and time on gaming,” Benson said, “and we want to match that interest.” TRG will draft off of TechRadar at launch The new publication, which launched in December, lives as a vertical on the website of its parent brand, the 12-year-old TechRadar. TRG will benefit from the traffic and brand association of TechRadar, which reaches 14 million readers monthly, per Comscore, but it plans to migrate to an independent domain in the future, Benson confirmed. Since December, TRG has reached 5 million visitors per month, with 75% of that traffic coming from organic search, according to the publisher. The title is too new for Comscore to confirm these figures. Since launching with a team of two, TRG has expanded its headcount to 12 and plans to make four additional hires: a hardware reporter, features reporter, a U.K. guides reporter and a U.S. news reporter, according to Benson. The investment in the young title reflects the ambitions of Future plc. for its gaming content, and TRG aims to increase traffic by 70% by October. Hardware coverage and informal voice will differentiate TRG TRG hopes to stand out among the increasingly competitive gaming sector by bringing the hardware sensibilities of TechRadar to the gaming world, and by incorporating a more conversational tone than other gear review sites, Benson said. Like TechRadar, which reviews personal tech like cell phones, computers and home office gadgets, TRG will devote a portion of its reporting to reviewing hardware relevant to gamers, such as consoles, controllers and headphones. So far, TRG has generated more than $8 million in commerce revenue this year, according to the publisher, 60% of which comes from its buying guides. More broadly, the publisher anticipates that trends within the industry will direct more consumer spending to hardware and subscriptions and less to software like the games themselves, Benson said. (Plus, another Future plc. title, GamesRadar, serves that market.) By focusing its coverage on reviews, consoles and gaming guides, TRG hopes to position itself to benefit as the gaming landscape shifts. The publisher will write in an informal, casual tone, a small departure from its TechRadar roots, but one that hopes to appeal to the young demographic of gamers. Reporters will also use American English, a reflection of the fact the site receives the majority of its traffic from readers in the U.S., Benson said. The choice also aligns with a larger strategy from Future plc., which acquired Marie Claire last spring, to expand its presence in the U.S. market.