Ad placements & Ad monetization trends in Mobile Games - September 2024

because you suck it like you you suck it suck it Ultra casual you're not good with anyway anyway so what I wanted to highlight here is the remove no no I'm showing another video okay so when you click on removing ads uh on removing the ads IP look at this so they make you choose two days so it's either two days you remove it for €2 or UNL limited where you remov for [Music] $2.99 this is a no [ __ ] gaming show where we talk about games and their revenue in great detail powered by our ad monetization game design and user acquisition Triple Threat expertise welcome to the two and a half Gamers the unfiltered truth served with a side of giggles

let's not forget this is a 4:00 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously tune in now and stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry ah hello I mean yeah you should you should do the intro Felix it's your idea to record from from Tokyo two and a half Gamers Tokyo Drift episode you you always do the intro and then I'll talk after but don't don't [ __ ] up a good thing it's been two and a half years that's that's true as well I know I know I know hello hello everybody this is uh my name is Pikachu P my name is Alam and I'm Snorlax no you're Slowpoke man like you're sloke yeah Slowpoke you can't you don't know your Pokemon uh anyway welcome everybody it's to and a Gamers or two and a half pundits I don't know anymore it's all all the fun apparently um so we're doing an episode well two

gamers are in Tokyo half gamer is at home and we have fre Pokemon podcast as well so let's see why are we talking about Felix oh well let's let's do the proper my name is mat Lan um Felix braberg and and we are your hosts and uh we're going to talk about art placements is that correct that's very correct but first me and yakob are actually dialing and as you can hear from very far away you can hear by yob S quality cuz we're really far away cuz we're actually in Japan and we have been to Tokyo game show well I didn't get in because I didn't have any business cards and uh yeah no let's stop here let's stop here let stop here no no no no no let me say here like in Remo you have to agree with me that Tokyo game show is the worst and most unnecessary gaming like show and

conference in the world and I can't wait to go next year tldr there's a written notice on the ticket please bring two business cards to identify yourself guess what Felix did didn't bring any business card then I translated and say I don't have any business cards because of the environment and the guys looked at me and shook his head but H it sounds like a me the the business day the business day was [ __ ] [ __ ] T full of people I thought it was a consumer day but it was a business day the whole Expo stage was completely packed I can't imagine what would happened if I would go there today or or yesterday on the consumer day but this conference like man the business sense to be here is next to zero but I can't wait to go back cuz it's been so much fun being here like you mean it was pretty good the parties were great I played roulette Casino great okay well all right well good M you have to come next year

because it's uh it's a lot of fun here in Japan okay I will try maybe maybe I it's fine I have never been I I will all right no one no one cares okay let me actually get on to something that someone cares about so I have prepared uh the second installment out of all our listeners favorite episode which is of course ad placements and what is working right now in Mobile gaming in terms of AD placements so I have been playing games uh that yeah I know wow anyway on the phone yeah anyway anyway I've been playing games that have high downloads low IAP because essentially that is an indicator of a lot of AD revenue and basically that's the domain I kind of exist in so you don't have to care about these pesky stupid IAP Revenue stuff and I've noticed when I'm playing these games that exactly what mach is also talking about on our creative review which is

super interesting by the way that there's kind of General meta trends that are happening in the creative Spence that's driving UA also game design is at least for like IAP or I can I say ad placement design is kind of on a loop as well that basically They're copying a lot and looking a lot towards each other and there's actually a lot of meta trends that you can see and it's pretty clear from playing these games that UA more than ever is driving game design and also ad placement design so there's kind of okay so I've been feel like he's actually listening to what we are talking about right I know right yeah so there's there's seven games I want to talk about I have graphs I have videos unfortunately since I don't have an emulator but I probably have to become a Remo soon enough and start cheating uh because yeah some interesting stuff that cheating be [ __ ] efficient man yeah says the guy who didn't bring a mic to Tokyo recorded his phone

I would be very careful I know I know you are in your own submarine as you suggested in the previous episodes but still and you have a cute Pokemon so we can't get angry at you but anyway a Pokemon submarine I'm okay man okay so before fine before I start talking about these seven games uh essentially the kind of three meta trends that I've noticed in terms of AD placements is that uh there's a lot of experimentation going on right now with remove ads messaging and remove ad buttons and I have a feeling that's driving a lot of uh what can you say IP to remove ads because there's a lot of sneaky [ __ ] going on in game design on this yeah but more so now than before and also what kind of is back is that hiding content behind watching a lot of rewarded ads is back that kind of was gone for the last two years but it's back and it used to be you have unfolding gameplay and you watch rewarded ads to enhance your gameplay now it's actually to play the

full app and more now than ever as well I've noticed that app design is actually trickling into game design because there's also a lot of features that used to be an app design that's now getting incorporated into the ad monetization design of a lot of games but anyway uh so first isn't it the other way around it usually is right but basically I've started to I've seen in three of the games going to talk about now basically a lot of the things that we talked about on the impulse episode are now in games that got released within the last month so quite interesting stuff so I'm going to share my screen so uh there's seven games I want to talk about uh so first we're going to start yeah I'm going to show I'm going to do more showing than telling so the first game I want to talk about is nut sort by zepher mobile so it has 3.2 million downloads wait a second

wait a second you know who bought zph from mobile I do not do not is isn't this well yeah talking about it I know huge nope but you are geographically well no geographically closed because Z mobile is from our area but the company who bought them was is it triple Studios oh triple do yeah [ __ ] I knew it ah yeah you can so in the last 30 days uh it has 3.2 million downloads which is a shitload and it's only made about 24K in I APS in the same time frame and come on it's not really monetized by iips that much no that's why I'm talking about it it's pure out play right so uh the game got released in February and

basically the game play is a puzzle sort game can you guys see this video or should I make it bigger you can make yeah everything bigger here in Alakazam land yeah everything bigger yeah all right how was that I can send the video and you can add in post I'm not doing this extra work for I'm not doing this extra work for you like come on like try hard all right [ __ ] where did he go yeah so anyway the it's a wood it's basically a nut puzzle sorting game when you have to match the colors and how you do that is basically you move the nuts and to match the colors and then you beat the levels it's kind of the the normal puzzle uh where the meta game is exactly like in Twisted tangle basically the metag game has been figured out for it this is not Twisted tangle man this is no no The Meta game The Meta game is but basically the core game play is you have to sort these like things together and there's reward ad placements uh that

kind of make the game play Easier so you can get more placements to put these like when you're sorting the the nuts to mat this is Woods nuts and bolts rather than just exactly Twisted tangle but you guys notice something actually actually this is this is closer to water sword but the difference is that water sword is a liquid which it you put into like a different thing it makes it whole as a one part whereas here these nuts stay separate all the time but still you need to kind of put them on the same color okay so here the first thing that I would say which is kind of one of the metat trends that I've started to notice is look at that x button right there where does that come from me leading B clicks exactly so basically the x button is exactly the same as you have on impulse and if you click it you get this screen right so you finish it and you click on it and I clicked on it here and VIP access free trial 3 days then two a week to remove

the ads right oh my God the subscription based Shady stuff from the wor we're going to stay we're going to stay on this but anyway so this is the core gameplay but yeah so there's one rewarded ad placement that you can use to make gameplay easier nothing new there this is remove ads for subscription which is kind of sneaky because you know that's a bit weird way to do it but I'm you play this game in Japan of course I did okay then you got the Japanese at right there a few few sex screens ago nice anyway so here's the free trial you can click on but basically when you go to the main menu there's not that much to see but basically there's a lot of Aesthetics so there's actually 21 rewarded ads that you can watch to unlock all the Aesthetics to make basically game play look prettier also you get cosmetic skins yeah SK a

Aesthetics so basically background so basically you can unlock it to yeah watch rewarded ads to unlock like customized backgrounds and if you watch 21 rewarded ads essentially that means you can unlock all of it and they have a part as well for the nuts which I think is going to be eventually unlocked but yeah that's kind of what's been going on there but what's interesting with this is like this has been kind of scaling in a straight line and it's all through ads right so it's scaling in a very interesting way and if you think of these things as well there's also another game that I want to talk about called cryptogram and it's by joy teractive and in the last 30 days it's ranked in terms of download as the second highest category for in the US so it has 2.1 million downloads in the last 30 days and it's made a quarter of a

million dollars in the last 30 days in the word category in the word category yes in the word category so you can see that this is a bit more of a shark fin because okay it'sit shark we're gonna find out but it released in July and this is the type July last year yeah July last year and this is the the type of game that I absolutely loathe cuz I have dyslexia and I'm in a [ __ ] and I absolutely hate word games so this is how much I'm actually like appreciating our listeners because I hate these kind of games but this looks pretty healthy like it's killing up yeah exactly like there's nothing like shark no yeah all in hinki for PGC yeah so so so the core gameplay is essentially solving word puzzles and essentially uh three mistakes uh makes

you lose a life just pause for for a second this is second game and second game you are showing with starting of uh an Banner from Total battle our friends from they're buying everything they're buy buying everything but the most interesting uh thing in this game right is it's a word game but the whole economy is centered around watching reward ads because it's really easy to make mistakes especially if you're a blond [ __ ] like me with words so you make three simple mistakes and then you have to restart and you lose a life but the thing is you can top up with lives unlimited by watching rewarded ads so the whole economy is just centered on watching rewarded ads which is super interesting but wait a second this is hangman Style game not the word Scapes look so basically you choose and it's new new kind of

uh see this here I I wanted to pause here because basically I wanted to say that Mach what do you see here right now in this game play that reminds you of something Crea exctly so when you lose a life and you restart the level you're reminded of how clever you are if you can beat this level no no but if I understand this is exactly the same core World gameplay that even offline games had just with hangman visualization exactly it is yeah now now more game board games are going in this direction rather than just the Classic World skips but what I wanted to talk about as well is look at the remove ads it's a slider up there that looks so easy to click that you can just slide this is it here we go I'll skip ahead of it because we've already covered exactly this creative on our creative creative Trends uh if you haven't seen that episode go back and look at it is a great one uh let me

ahead uh long one long a long one yeah so okay rewarded out for our life and then here what you can happens is that if you actually press the slider which casually looks like it's something really easy to press then essentially you're taking directly to make an I directly right okay you do the innocent slider which you've done so many times in your appphone but then the most sneaky thing is if you go into settings and you press ads it's the same slider and then you have can pay to remove no confirmation popup even exactly it just go straight in right yeah nice there you go and just pay for it and it's a one time payment or subscription onetime payment okay I have another good video of it here uh but it's interesting you're asking because all the other games have kind of done in a different way so here if you're

sliding it it goes right in uh super sneaky it's perfect which kind of brings me to another game on how they're doing kind of the remove ads feature which is called statist them by Abby Global statis D with dyslexic statis statis Mr statis satis it's satis in terms of like satisfy the when satis when someone messes up it's best to make fun of them because that's that's the best way to learn anyway well you make fun of me all the time I mean you you really do deserve it I know if we don't learn exactly okay but anyway Abby Global our friends in Vietnam that I'm hoping to meet when I go to Vietnam in November uh they have 2.6 million downloads in the last 30 days and a whopping 10K in I Revenue it's r ranking 21 in the puzzle category uh in the last

30 days download what was the sub genre there sorry puzzle go back one puzzle no no no there was some longer world if if you go back into the previous screen downlo no no no top top top top top top of the screen ultra casual Ultra casual okay that's what I wanted to see who knows you know something like uh bigger than hyper casual it seems okay Ultra casual okay why doesn't it say when came out oh anyway so uh what I wanted to highlight here is because it went live in April or straight if you go and do days instead of months automatic then you will see ah very cool okay that makes sense so it's kind of stabilizing right uh but I what I what staidum does is that they've started to split uh removing ads so here's the game play right so here's the game play

uh here's the game play so it's uh I see what you mean with ultra casual cuz basically what you're supposed to do I mean that Sor Tower does to no no no but I see what they mean with ultra casual because what you're supposed to do is you can skip levels with a rewarded ads but it's basically these type of small puzzle games exactly bit like matching and Mansion done uh matching matching in games does and what you do is you click and you solve these small little things that takes about 10 seconds and then you move on to the next level that's it and this is the next level paper origami no you move this envelope and you put the stamp on and that's the level o what that's it that was one level that was one level and here you have cat hands when you touch the fish to match the colors okay so those are like me pixel Style 10 seconds puzzles exactly 10 second puzzles this is yeah this is really Ultra casual I can agree with that yeah but the interesting thing that

I wanted to talk about in this game is is you playing the the game by the way because you suck it like you you suck it suck it Ultra casual you're not good with cat anyway anyway so what I wanted to highlight here is the remove no no I'm showing another video okay so when you click on removing ads uh on removing the ads I look at this so they make you choose two days so it's either two days you remove it for € two or unlimited where you removed for $2.99 so where else have we seen this in our app episode is this is exactly like a card taken from removing ads but in an app because you're given a choice and you're supposed to make kind of with framing one look a lot more cheaper like no one in the right mind is going to click two days everyone's going to click the unlimited but the two days is just there to frame that whatever you click

on unlimited is a lot cheaper than on the two days one right also this shows you the exact LTV of the players like yeah they're gone in two days bye yeah exactly o anyway they hardev they're hard levels right this is how you felt when you're trying to catch the fish yeah exactly yeah anyway here you have another level it's very hard right but uh how much how much is this game making a month by your guest just curious uh if it has this many active user give me just a number h rough estimate probably this game is making like between 30 to 60k a day 60k a day in ads yeah 60k so 2 million a month yeah something like that right but what I want to remember here is I know right uh is that okay so

remember what we talked about now on uh saem and I want to bring your attention stop saying the name stop saying the name okay what I'm talk about now is pinout by hypercell and pinout has gotten what how we going from hyper casual to ultra casual and from supercell to hypercell hyp hyper cell yeah can out master so uh this G this game has gotten 1.5 million downloads in the last 30 days with a revenue of Ip revenue of 25k uh but what's really interesting here is that they're just grown from the 15th of September to now and they really shark fined it so they gone can you show the Country Split please in the yeah there it's like India a lot of us a lot of India yeah a lot of us India Russia is okay fine yeah other okay fine good yeah that's fine so uh what I want to show here

is this is the core game playay o my eyes I know so what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to pull out pins you have a limited amount of moves wow wow and you're supposed to move it around it's actually need to zoom in and out and it's very very timec consuming and very frustrating because if you click the wrong one you can screw everything up but as you can see here I'm very skilled at this because this is exactly my game genre shut up was was the fail statement a moves okay it's moves yeah moves yeah moves wow okay so dear listeners we are we are looking at Absolute skill by Felix braber in yeah exactly so this is the game right so I'll skip ahead a bit so you don't need to see my genius not mov yeah not in enough moves so you can either watch a rewarded ad or give up but here you see the the unfolding kind of game which is I guess that's exactly what Voodoo does and Rox

does is exactly this is play the same meta like exactly taken from there but what I wanted to bring attention to is how they do the remove ads button and then I want to say something look at this oh seven days forever nice yeah exactly so what they did is like they animated it in a bigger way so either you can do a €6 subscription per week that removes ads or pay $9.99 9 to remove it forever but if you remember to my last episode we did on this which where I highlighted bike ride 3D by SG Dev basically what they do is look at this bottom part when I click on the button again right so the animation comes and you see how long it takes for the no thanks to come up below it's exactly like the rewarded ads yeah no thanks okay this is like a re like short rewarded video basically exactly and if you

go just go back and show yeah the the main menu now just go to the main menu and then there's the the yeah there's the icon on the left hand side if you go there there's the hamster you know what it is yeah no the hamster combat I hope so is it well if you really is a hamster combat I think so I mean I think so so if you then Felix open the game afterwards and then put it in our Slack what happens after you you actually click on that icon because it kind of reminds me the hamster combat icon and the hamu combat is ABS the game which is absolutely booming on Telegram and everywhere else basically this is the game booming because [ __ ] don't of B nobody cares honestly uh I heard a lot of different it's it's not it's not relevant to this discussion where from different discussion I just want know if

this is if this is really the H combat because they are now kind of trying to connect with a lot of uh devs and it's basically almost like like an offer wall like you you play game and then you get something in the ham to combat so like you know these all all these Partnerships and if this is if this is the partnership like it's something I want to really know so Felix then if you can post this in the S section afterwards that will be amaz okay is that where you're wearing a misplay t-shirt no not really it's just yeah I mean this is the this is the the week of the misplay okay it's laundry it's laundry day then okay okay so the hamster combat game is on telegram not on Play Store is it I have no idea we can Che I don't think so we can check afterwards the next game I want to talk about has unfolding like locks also content behind rewarded ads and it's magic tiles 3 piano by amanotes

pte LTD are you doing your Vietnamese research yeah but this game is absolutely [ __ ] killing it man 5 million downloads in the last 30 days send who we met uh in in Barcelona EXA nice guy by the way yeah shout outs yeah uh made nearly half a million I in the same time period but look at this lifetime Revenue since launch like yeah nuts and bolts nuts and bolts right yeah yes besides this 35 million revenues it's like 800 million downloads seriously yeah it's it's just it's just crazy that insane yeah um so here I just want to make this this game is like an

intertial Absolut this is not it because there just soals you can't actually start gameplay without watching okay thought so here you go perfect were you playing it's a bit like beat Star where you press and you press the piano or play the piano oh you're are a great piano player exactly yeah but here here I lose difficulty thanks man I mean I seriously like being a [ __ ] with this like submarine voice yeah so look just saying what I see like each of these levels have like three to four difficulties basically okay so you have the rewarded ads okay so that's the core gameplay when you play it right uh but what I think it's really interesting what they're kind of doing is that they hide so much of their content behind remed ads so if you go to the main menu like majority of the content is hidden behind a ad

exactly and it's like basically frames right uh so what I wanted to highlight there is like one of the main things is just hiding a lot more content behind rewarded ads and now I've saved the best is that it no it's not it but what I've kind of Saved is also the best for last because I mean if if that's it from the like the magic tiles I mean yeah yeah but there's a there's yeah no no there's more coming there's more coming behind it but anyway like soon hang on so what I wanted to show as well is there's a new game from Ric uh or take two interactive I guess called I mean new game [ __ ] I showed you this game like three or four months ago yes disc see way this is super old yeah exactly anyway 1.2 million downloads 1.8 million in Revenue calling calling the [ __ ] detector here Mr

Felix hello anyway same metacore gameplay right and it's a bit different mechanic from the normal one so it's basically a SE puzzle where you kind of zooming in on the bus gamep playay I'm on level 75 I know I play this game for I had this in my presentation in the summer on hybrid casual oh congrats man all right fine I'll just skip this one like no no no just tell us like what is that Revelation there no basically what I wanted to talk about here is actually not seway but essentially kind of what's going on in the puzzle genre because there's a new game that came out really recently that's kind of taken a lot of interesting things so it's called car Jam okay uh it came out in mid August and it basically takes a lot of things from what we've been talking about basically borrows things from offline

Wi-Fi games like no Wi-fi games and kind of uh your bus Jam no Wi-Fi and basically uses locks a lot of content behind no ads and in the last 30 days it's got 1.7 million downloads and it's made 2K in IEP so it's scaling like hell through mainly rewarded ads and let me show you some of the gameplay because you guys are going to laugh well I'm pretty sure we will yeah so here's the game play so what do you notice yeah well you it's exactly there the the park jam with buz gem together exactly so basically you have to solve the puzzles and make sure everyone gets on uh the buses and rides away while you're also shorting out like sorting out the traffic Gem and that's the game play right but what's really interesting is that when you go to the main menu uh

when you finish or between levels you're actually taken to like encourag to play other casual games and you see here what they have rope puzzle new Tetris balloon match and what you have to do is you have to watch three rewarded ads to unlock that those games and then you can play it in so basically what done is they put all the games that you have in no Wi-fi games yeah and they kind of put it all hid it into a button exact is it's a Chinese company obviously right because they've hdden so much stuff underneath it let me click through it so you can actually play the games when you watch three rewarded ODS in a row yeah hello Mr Albert Einstein yeah good to see you again play The Block puzzle

nice well easy T the T yeah you to unlock it mean almost okay let's TR it again so this is the main menu and then what you're encouraged to do is just play other casual games okay with uh rewarded videos yeah see and here also skin tone unlock with rewarded ads but yeah a Aesthetics yeah how much is it currently making 2K uh it's 2K 2K but in active users like it's scaling like crazy right so it's uh yeah averaging a weekly wow of 500k right so this game is probably making anywhere between 30 50 to 60k I would say a day so two million a month yeah exactly but it scale up really quickly okay oh

oh oh hello so that's everything I had for you gentlemen on this fine evening is that's true well evening depends I finally I'm not recording in like a late night show and you are actually late night show at the moment exactly okay so what's uh what's the what's the verdict uh comp gaming companies are now trying to move into more the the no Wi-fi game collection or like what's the I would say now more than ever like UA is even driving more and more of the game design like you can see it more clearly especially like in the genre where you have a slower or like a shorter production cycle you can see here like the 95% of people can't beat this level like you wouldn't have seen that if it wasn't for the UA creatives for example that's very creative right there that's true yeah exactly and then also uh hiding stuff behind rewarded ads that's

I call Aesthetics but Remo calls what do you call it content what do you call you mean cosmetic Cosmetics Cosmetics Aesthetics I really like the the impulse SL app world connection to to the first game um examples yeah with the standard for everyone who has banner ads in the future because it just makes so much sense like why wouldn't you put but every time you see an annoying Banner ad remind people that you can actually remove the ads by paying money from my my point of VI this all seems like uh these like let's call them Ultra casual games because lot of these are kind of ultra casual but in the end they have much stronger featur set than hyper casual game they just push the approach ability lower so they are Ultra casual but regarding the overall features today is actually higher especially on content side so all of these like like at placement fits them very well

because they are very very borderline between game and yeah they're very easy but it's kind of interesting to see CU like use like by Revenue models most of the games that I went through now they're hyper casual right and which means there still is a lot of space in Mobile gaming for games that monetize mainly through ANS yeah well next time when uh when we talk about this we can also pair with the UA view because that would tell us all like where where are these games actually run UA that would be interesting oh maybe we should do a team up for the next episode what do you say m yeah we can we can definitely do it I mean it's easy and on that bombshell it's time to end Remo do you want to take us away with something cute since you're holding all the plushies um yeah the most cutest thing that I saw today was actually a kids Pig Cafe oh that was great Sunshine City shopping mall a piglet a piglet Cafe

piglet Cafe yeah yeah literally like you could go there with your kids and they can like pet the little piggies and like have some stuff floor under it there was like a Pokemon cafe have some stuff that wasn't creepy at all I mean have some stuff to eat what do they Ser bacon do they serve bacon and that he just he just said like to have something to eat like I mean anyway yeah I'm looking forward to for you to to come back which is going to be in few days it's going to be live on Thursday and I'm not going to spoil it just join our slack Channel we're going to talk about what we are going to talk about there oh seriously yeah you should join uh please subscribe uh tell us what you think about the episode about us wait wait uh actually what we would like to do for

you is hype not subscribe and like hype is not live yet it's not live yet it's not live yet I mean you're talking about uh reading stuff but it's not live yet worldwide it's live in like in few countries only but if you find it live in Turkey actually oh maybe so if you if you have the option to hype this episode I mean not sure this is the hype episode you want to Hype but please do so on YouTube especially and and try yeah but YouTube's new kind of proing small creators feature that they released start of to like And subscribe and hype yeah like subscribe and hype hype this [ __ ] okay you enough enough good night for you guys have a nice day everybody else thank you very much for coming see you next time byebye are you're not saying hi you [ __ ] idiots Jah thank you

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