Each week the Bidstack team curate the most interesting stories from the world of gaming, advertising and esports to help you keep ahead of the pack when it comes to in-game advertising. To check out this weeks highlights click on the links below.

This weeks highlights:

1. Athletes, sports team and organisations turn to esports – Pro sports teams and athletes from across the globe reacted to the ongoing postponements and cancellations of events by entertaining and engaging their fans via gaming and esports.
2. US gaming has seen a 75% surge in one week – In the US research by Verizon highlighted that video game usage in peak hours has increased by 75% since the quarantine first came into effect, while video streaming services have seen a 12% increase.
3. Record numbers turn to Football Manager 2020 – Football Manager confirmed record numbers played their game last week. In addition to this Football Manager made their game free to play for the next week. This announcement saw more than 110k new downloads of the game on the first day (get your free copy here).
4. In-game: The dawn of a new ad category – Our CEO James Draper shared his thoughts with The Drum on the opportunities gaming offers to brands and the ongoing development of in-game advertising as an ad category.
5. Italian Internet traffic is up 70% thanks to gaming marathons – With Italy in lockdown and schools closed they have seen huge spikes in internet traffic. It is believed this is largely down to young people playing Fortnite and the record breaking new release Call Of Duty: Warzone.
6. WARC take a deep dive into what Covid-19 means for adland – WARC Data, take a look at three scenarios in which the spread of COVID-19 may potentially impact purchasing, media consumption and advertising investment.