Apps vs Games on Mobile 2026: What’s Growing Faster (And Why)

You can look at apps like life 360 which is safety like you can track where your kids are where your family is and so on. And like if we think about that that business if you're a mother and your kid is let's say that your kid is three years old right now and he's going to kindergarten then they are going to go through primary school, high school, university. probably dur during those entire years, you're gonna be wanting to track where your kid is to make sure that they are safe. And that gives like an LTV of this person of like 12 years from 3 years old to 15 years old for the kid. That's crazy.
Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of AOI 101. I'm Roman from Tangent. I'll give you one quote. I don't see app studios getting into games. I just see game studios getting

into apps. And that's a quote from Evelyn and she's our guest today. Hi Evelyn.
Hey Roman. Thank you for having me. That's a good quote.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is what got you into this podcast. uh we read that pocket gamer article with that headline and that of course immediately uh sparked a lot of interest but maybe I'll let you introduce yourself first.
Yeah, thank you. Um so I've been doing apps and games M&A for 10 months now. My firm is very new. Uh but we have been dominating the market because we move faster than than other firms. uh we are more founders oriented and we also have this intersection between consumer apps in gaming and as you saw in the article we see the strengths of gaming studios getting into apps. So I think we are having really good momentum and thank you pocket gamers and arrow they were

really good in like framing that article in an interesting way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just just to make it clear, you guys help app developers sell their apps and let's call investors, buyers buy an app, right?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Gotcha. Just out of curiosity like how many apps do you see on monthly basis for example just as a opportunity? Uh
yeah. So right now we have 320 assets meaning different apps and games. These 320 assets are from different companies. So maybe 10 assets, 10 games or 10 apps are from the same company that have a portfolio. Or maybe one company just has like one big app or one big game.
Gotcha.
But we are seeing anywhere between like 50 to 100 apps or games every month.
Gotcha. just just wanted to understand a

little bit uh how many apps do you see or like we also like call it gaming non-gaming just to be like precise in terms of
whether it's makes sense
right
but definitely a hot trend uh for and for us to like especially for the Q4
and uh we are happy to dive in into your perspective especially since you working with a lot of apps. So I'll just uh let you share your screen.
Um so what we've done here, we turn that article into the slides and I'll let Evelyn explain and uh just ask a bunch of questions while she's presenting that.
Let's get into it. So thank you Roman for the slides and I also share my prediction for 2026 which is capital is

going to shift from games to apps. That's a really bold prediction but it has many components into it. So let's talk about this intersection between apps and games. So first in terms of acquisitions what buyers are looking for and to clarify my firm takes care of small to mid market. So this is deals between six figures and eight figures. Um and usually what we are seeing buyers being interested in it's acquiring games that have really good game mechanics and metrics regardless of IP. They are not looking for my talking. Of course you have like companies looking for my talking to but it's not 90% of the cases. 90% of the cases they are looking for opportunities that are either under monetized or they are not active actively spending into paid user acquisition. So the game is kind of like stuck somewhere. Um and any other like

opportunities that they can acquire and grow really quickly. So this is because they have a stronger IP they can use a stronger branding they can use or they have opportunities in terms of acquisition monetization retention
what's considered small like a small app
in terms of an acquisition
yeah in terms of a price specifically how much if I'm buying a a small app how much should I be willing
I will say for individual transactions like if you are if you are buying as Roman
a small transaction small to me will be up to 250,000
as a person.
Mhm.
But if you buy as a company small will be between 100k and 1 million and midsize between 1 million and 10 million.
Gotcha.
Yeah. And this is for one single asset.

So if you are buying just like a portfolio that's that's going to be bigger, right?
Okay, that's also good to know. So there are also deals uh as portfolios basically, right? So I'm just assuming our viewers never heard or anything about um buying or selling apps. So it's already like a lot of insights here. Yeah, in many cases we see gaming studios letting go part of their portfolio in a specific genre. So they let go like the RPG,
okay,
uh portfolio or they let go the puzzle portfolio and they keep the other ones. Um, and in some cases just one or two games because they know that they are not going to work in those games for the next two to three years and they can just make a more like a more strategic financial decision and they are going to earn more as a company by selling the titles when they are still with good metrics versus just letting them die

because they are not going to have time to optimize them and grow them.
Gotcha. Like if you if your game has great metrics right now, just sell it for a really good amount instead of letting it die if you already know you're not going to put any effort.
And and you probably started with games, right? The company was focused on games mainly because like EPS is like a pretty recent thing. they they've been uh here like all the time but I mean in terms of like lucrative uh and scalable business.
Yeah. Actually in my case started with apps
because talking about an acquisition the due diligence to assess the value of a mobile app is way easier than a mobile game because to monetize a game you need to consider so many different metrics. you have like session length, uh sessions per month, daily active users, monthly active users, trios, uh and and

it continues, right? Like placements, so many other things versus for an app that is like small size is way more easy. It's way easier to uh just understand the the mechanics of of the app. Uh the potential conversion. uh the costs are also lower because they run only with just one tool. Um so in my case I started with with apps just because it's easier for everyone to understand.
Gotcha. My take is that it's also easier to create an app versus game and the same goes for maintaining app versus a game. 100% and actually we can just like move through move through this. Um, in terms of apps, that's also part of why I think the capital is going to go to apps and it's because it's way easier

to launch and maintain. That doesn't mean that because you launch an app, the success is guaranteed. The quality is guaranteed just because it's easier, but it means that the the barrier for entry is gonna is going to be like low, lower than games. Therefore, many new entrepreneurs are going to come into apps and out of like 100 entrepreneurs probably you get two or three good ones versus out of 10, maybe you get none. Um, and another thing that that I'm seeing is like the capital in terms of venture capital and and other sort of of like capital allocation, it's going more into user acquisition financing instead of venture capital. And if you think about a business, you can launch a SK and scale an app business without BC capital just with UA financing or maybe not even with UA financing just from apps organic traffic

and from Tik Tok and Instagram content versus a game that right now AI is not strong enough to give you like a 90% ready game. It might be strong to help you with the narrative, the characters, ideas, some process optimization, but it's not going to give you like a game that is 90% ready. So games still need that VC funding somehow. Maybe it's not a large VC, maybe it's friends and family, but you still need it versus apps that anybody can launch an app with that $10 subscription to an AI tool from like anywhere in the world. I see. And what about the team team size? Like it I I don't have any data, but my hunch is telling me the apps team uh in on average smaller than the games team. From what your experience, what

have you seen?
100%. Yeah, we see profit margins like 55%, 70%.
Okay.
For apps, it's crazy. And usually the biggest line on the P&L it's marketing. Actually does the same for games too. Uh but yeah, you can run like a like a six year MR ad business just with five people on the payroll.
Nice. Very nice.
Maybe with games you can run it too, but to launch it you definitely need more resources because a game can be low maintenance. Like we also see evergreen games that are like seven years old. It's extremely optimized. Um, you can also run it with like a low head count, but it's after 10 years of business.
Gotcha. And the last
What is your take on
Uhhuh. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Yeah. What is your take on like AI on apps versus games?
I see both utilize AI obviously, but uh

I feel like apps utilizing more of it. much more of it, right?
Yeah. Actually, something that I will add to this slide is like arrows between both of them
because we're also seeing this trend of like gamification and like pocket gamers for example next year they are also hosting an app business summit not only the pocket gamers conference but also the non-gaming one of the main topic is going to be gamification. So I think hopefully this is going to be more like merged more blurred in the next years.
Absolutely. And of course like both can learn from each other. But in terms of vendors like everyone is uh turning into not games company but apps company just to cover more ground so to say.

But in terms of learning, it's like apps usually use subscription, right? I think for buy it makes a lot of sense. It's so predictable all of the revenue streams when the app uses a subscription, right?
Yeah. And usually users stay longer. Like if you on games if you have like a D35% retention it's like wow gold mine that you're one of the best ones in the market.
True.
For an app if D30 is 5% retention is like you're so bad like
no buyer will want to talk with you. But on the other hand, I barely see apps that are utilizing uh inapp advertising um efficiently. Yeah, it's usually only Android
and or it can be iOS 2, but apps that are targeting maybe like tier three geos

that they they don't they they don't tend to subscribe or on Android. You have cases on like utility, productivity, makeup apps, photo and video editing.
They do use it, but it's not as common. Yeah. So, just to say there is still like a lot of growth and a lot of opportunities because not everyone's going to pay and if you segment it properly then yeah that's even more revenue.
Yeah. And that's something that I see it's like lack of education because I don't know from if you're listening if you're active on X on Twitter but there's definitely a trend that has been all over the place this year which is launch an app business become a millionaire right there's this trend and everybody talks about it related to subscriptions and they talk about MR ARR

but some some founders some people they don't even know that they can monitor with inapp advertising. So, it's definitely an on top opportunity and I will say even for the service providers if they can educate all the all of these new audience, all of these like new founders in the industry, there's a huge part of the market that nobody is like paying attention to
and it's going mainstream. If you I'm not using X much, but if you're saying like people are talking about like can become a millionaire in like six months or I assume that's a headline.
Uh then it's kind of a mainstream or same.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's literally like crypto and web three years ago it's happening the same. But we that we have been in the industry for a longer time. You guys for 10 years, me for five years, we know that this industry is real. This is not a bubble. Yeah.

Uh so it's good that so if somebody could educate all of these newcomers and tell them like it works. You're not going to become a millionaire overnight. It's a real industry. You can monetize with all of these different ways. You can utilize all of these tools because also going to you guys like they don't know what an MMP is. I get clients that they are making like six six figures in MR. They never heard of an MMP because they send all of the traffic from like Tik Tok organic content.
Yeah. and then like just organic app store search. Why would they use NMP or why they will be interested in even searching like app attribution when they just have two sources very that they can track very easily?
Yeah. Yeah. So that's to say also competition is still didn't catch up and uh yeah and then the market hasn't matured yet enough. Do you agree?

Which market?
Uh, non-gaming caps.
I think as a market it's actually kind of mature, but it's just that there are many new founders. So maybe they need to get more involved. But it's not that the industry is not mature yet. It's just there are more newcomers. And this is why we also see new policies from Apple regarding copycats for example. Like a huge topic on apps this year was copycats because you see tons of copies from FL healthi
uh tons of different like top sharp apps. You see hundreds of competitors not even competitors they actually copy the app and they get some part of the traffic. Uh and App Store launched like a new policy regarding copyc cut cuts which is like if you if you're imitating the branding, the wording, the screenshots, the features, like pretty

much anything that you're getting too close, they are going to remove your app from the store. So I don't know if it's immature, but definitely it's evolving based on all of these new traffic that we are seeing of companies getting into apps.
Gotcha. And clearly it's going to continue with also chat GPT launching this feature with apps that you can just through chat sht utilize different apps that that experience will have to happen on mobile too like you have the experience on web but you will also need it on mobile. A question for you because you have way more like insider insider data into creative performance. So I'm curious if you're seeing good performance on AI creatives for gaming
um
for creatives.
Yeah, really depends. Uh there are like bad and good creatives for non AI and AI. So you can make some like good stuff with

AI and we've also done an episode on that recently. But um so far I don't see a correlation meaning like all AI uh creatives are bad or vice versa. So just to answer it will rise
from all of your clients will you see that there's a percentage that actually achieve success with AI creatives?
There are some yeah there are some I don't know the the percentage but I see that yeah it's definitely works. Yeah. Okay, because I think that's another point. I feel that apps they also haven't reached like the like complete success on AI ad creatives, but I feel that they are going to get there sooner.
I see.
We can see with like e-commerce, they are already there at least to showcase your product is so easy right now with AI and it works perfectly. So I'm guessing that soon enough is going to

happen to for apps and I think apps is going to be faster than games in winning that race too in terms of AI ad creators
right I also was talking like internally in terms of like if I'm using AI to create an app I would use continue using AI to do the research to create ads to educate myself on how to run ads. So, it's kind of
full cycle, right?
So, you basically told your boss like, "Hey, I think I'm getting into non-gaming. All of your gaming clients, you guys can keep managing them."
Well, no, I'm kidding. We We love games, too.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But there is a growth.
They start.
Absolutely.
Yeah. It's just what's happening in the industry. Apps are getting there. And it's funny because for all of the last years, it was always like, "Ah, apps are so cheap." like they don't make enough money as we do and now it's like what's

happening guys coming to us come to mubas
yeah that's yeah I I would never predict that like five years or even four years ago with the AT stuff and yeah but that's good that's good for the industry it's very good for the industry
I agree let's see what else we have I think another interesting point is like why companies acquire apps and games because it seems expensive, right? You're spending like six figures, seven figures, eight figures in buying an asset. And in most of the cases we see that they are acquiring. We are talking about financial acquisitions, not strategic. And to clarify, financial is when the buyer is going to benefit from it in a financial way like increasing monthly recurring revenue in increasing EVA numbers versus a strategic acquisition that maybe they are not going to make a quick return on investment. Uh maybe they are not going to highly increase their monthly

recurring revenue but they are going to benefit from the app features or the app audience. Just to clarify. Mhm.
Uh so when we talk about financial acquisitions, usually we see this happening because they want to first buy time. Um if we think about like developing and launching a game from scratch, that takes minimum nine months. Minimum. You can be extremely good like a one person in the industry and you can maybe launch it in five months. But then you also have all the um all the like soft launch period and then you need to find this product market fit and then you need to find to become like profitable on ad spend. All of that cycle doesn't take less than one year easily. Versus if you acquire, it takes you four to five weeks to finalize the process

and you can acquire an asset that already has the game mechanics that work, already has good retention metrics, already has proven like product market fit and profitability on paid acquisition. And if your company is growing fast and you have like maybe a goal to exit your company from now to three years, your numbers are going to look way better if you move faster by doing acquisitions instead of developing from scratch, launching and then see it how it if it works, if you're lucky and it works after 12 months of work from your team.
I see. No, makes a lot of sense. But let's talk a bit uh about again money again. Um
so I have an app theoretical uh let's say I'm making like 100,000k per year. What is a realistic price I can sell it

for? Does
yes
understand the logic? Usually it's based on profit.
So let's say that out of those 100k you are making 50k on annual profit.
Probably you can sell it for a 3 to 5x multiplier. So this multiplier is a very simple like 3 to five you apply that multiplier on top of the annual profit. So if it's three you will sell for 150k. If it's five you will sell it for 250k. Super straightforward. Understood.
Very straightforward. Then what you can work on is like as a founder, what can you optimize to have to be on the lower end of the range like on 5x instead of on three.
And this is usually like profit margins, customer acquisition cost, organic keyword rankings, like different things that you can optimize to have a better

valuation, but usually sits between two to five on annual profit. That's that's a really important like differentiation. Sometimes developers they set evaluation based on monthly recurring revenue. It not always works because maybe you get 100K but you're spending 90K on user acquisition. So you're barely profitable.
Gotcha. Makes sense. But still makes sense. It changes if you're like an app that is growing really fast and you like the the user acquisition spend is going to reflect on future value for the company and future profitability. In those cases, you can find like different valuation methods.
Yeah. Yeah. But I don't think that happens often, right? that be like some either tech behind it or like some friend or like not most of the app really.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's like probably 7% of the cases out

of 93%.
Yeah. Yeah. Sense.
Yeah. And also another thing is like if you're building to exit um to a strategic buyer or for a multiplier like we also got offers for 7x and the offers go all the way to 8x for app businesses but if you're going to if you're like aiming for that multiplier you need to have something very unique and the focus needs to be super strong for many years like at least three years but more realistic five to 10 years if you're aiming for that multiplier. And the thing in 2025 is like everything is moving so fast. So you want to build a company, grow it for five months, and then sell it in the sixth month. And that can happen, but it's not going to happen for an 8x, not even a 5x. It's going to happen for a three if you're lucky, and maybe even a two.
So it's also like the mindset as a as an

entrepreneur. But still it's a good to like business model like okay I work on something six months and can sell it for even 3x from profit sounds good to me.
I think like the great opportunity with apps and AI is like find what you're really good at. Like maybe you're a developer and you don't like distribution but you can keep creating good products and just partner with someone that is good in distribution. If you're really good in marketing, just get a an app from a freelance developer or learn AI, launch it yourself, and then monetize it quickly. And if you're looking for to be something more like long-term, you can also do that and then sell for a higher multiplier. So, there's like an opportunity for everyone, like whatever you're good at, you can build and and sell in in 2025,

2026. Yeah.
Yeah. And I
you know that
No, no, go ahead.
No, I just want to say like there's a I'm hearing more and more about like buying or selling apps.
I want to attribute that to me.
Ah, okay. Probably. Yes.
I don't know. Maybe. No, but what are you seeing it? Like what are you reading out this or or just watching videos? Whatever. I know already like a couple of companies or like I think the name as a position even like independent brokers that are doing it and I've started seeing them the last two years. Um not sure if that's coincidence or like let's say serious investors are not started noticing that that can be a business and not like games you know.

Yeah, I think a big part of it is like success before the expectation was to achieve success in five years actually like 10 years then I think in 2022 2023 it became like five years
but now companies and investors and everyone expect for you to achieve success in one years two years maximum. Ah wow.
So
yeah,
acquiring businesses is like part of it, right? It's like a way to win the race.
Yeah. Yeah. And again only good for everyone that there is like another option.
Yeah. Okay. Let's see what else we have there. We already covered this. um
organic growth via ASO keywords UGC is how many like in terms of percentage is it like

more than half that are not utilizing UA at all and can still sell. So I would say the top apps on each one of the categories most of them are going to be using paidway because even if your organic acquisition is very good if you want to stay in the top charts it needs to be even stronger.
You need even more traffic you cannot rely only on the people searching on the app store you need way more.
Yeah. Okay. So I will say most of the apps that are like number one to 20 in their categories are spending on paida. But you also have many on the like number 20 to number 120
who are just getting organic traffic and usually see on on Tik Tok or or Instagram and it's a very strong point to to start your business with like I have been seeing clients that they scale to 100k 150k in MR just from organic UC

and then they start spending on pyway which is an extremely smart decision. because of multiple reasons. First, profitability. Like you're only starting spending on paid way once you're already profitable and you have cash in case you're making any mistakes or you're just passing the learning curve on the different channels. But the most important one is that they already understand their audience and which creatives and which messaging works because they have been doing creatives for a long time. They went viral many times. they work with different creators. So when they start running Payway, it's just putting some behind things that they already proven to work. So usually the steps that they follow is like they post all of their assets, all of their content in an organic way and the ones that go viral, they bug with paid UA after.
Exactly. That's what I wanted to say from UA side. You already have all your

assets, but most importantly, you already understand your audience and you know what works, so you can produce more of those.
Yeah. And also PUA like um it's very important to understand who are your your powerful users in terms of like retention and just how much they spend in the app like what is their PU? Um, and you can understand that more with paid UA because you're targeting specific audiences and you can measure the results by these different audiences. If you're doing like only organic acquisition through the app store, you can always have like an onboarding poll or questions and try to get some data, but it's not the same than doing like an active targeting on paid dua and understanding which users are converting converting more.
Makes sense. makes a lot of sense.
So I think both are important but just like the funnel is is the opposite way

for gaming. For gaming like even in the soft launch the first step is like spend money.
True.
And see who comes and how they react.
No way.
In apps is all the opposite. Start launching videos for free.
See see see what works and then start spending money. Even we are seeing some trends on different apps that their most performing creatives are using the founders.
I I clicked on couple of those too.
Okay. So it's true.
It works.
Yeah. And I think it makes so much sense. It's so strong. Like nobody wants to see AI people on fake creatives. Nobody wants to see brands. They are bored and tired. So just putting your face out there, it also gives more trust. Like if you don't like the features and if you want your money back, here's my face, here's my name, you can do anything you want versus just like try this uh shady app that you don't know who's the founder or anything

else.
Yeah. And what they also highlight is their background. Um, I don't remember the name of the app, but it uh helps you to beat the jet lag and
it was said that it was built by a former astronaut. So, he had to
deal with it a lot of times. I'm not sure if that's true though, but um that was
super interesting.
Yeah. But then again, works.
Yeah. And another thing I'm just thinking like top of my mind but ideas on like how to comp how games and apps are can be compared just keep coming to my mind and it's that like on apps you see many influencers celebrities and famous people launching their own app versus games but this is from my own I don't have data on this it's just on my perspective and what I have been seeing

the last years for games they partner with famous people like celebrities, actors, musicians, they partner with them and they pay for like they they pay to collaborate and I think that's another big difference because the like just the capital that you need to collaborate with these people is huge. the there were some uh let's say in influencers le games that were like um
for example probably Kim Kardashian one is the most popular one.
Oh yeah.
But I don't think
but that one was like three years ago.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there were a couple of other from the internet influencer but I don't remember if any of them actually were any success.
Yeah. versus like for apps you have like my Swim Pro is one of the best apps for swimming optimization.
It was launched by an Olympic
Yeah.
famous swimmer
and that app is never going to die. It's

like something that LeBron James launched. Like even if the guy is no longer playing, people are going to keep using his app for basketball. Like it's discussed. I think that's another strong point.
Mhm. Now that creator economy is getting bigger I never point to apps. Sorry games. Um yeah any other thing you want to cover from this slide?
No no I think we covered that so we can go to the next one.
Oh just one more is like
the revenue potential from minimal features. This is so interesting because you see many top apps that have only one single feature or two features and the team only focuses on optimizing these one or two single features and they become the best at those like functionalities versus for games that you need to keep creating content. If the game is good is

it's never over. You need to like keep adding content and so on all the time. But perhaps you if you just really optimize that single feature, you can make like a multi-million dollar business.
Can you give an example an app like that?
Yeah. Yeah. Cali. Uh let me let me share. So for example, like this app, I think everybody saw this app this year. They were all the time in the top charts for health and fitness. And the only thing they do is like take a picture of your food and get the the calories. That's that's it. That's it. So imagine like as like a development team, of course, they still need to optimize many things, but it's it's definitely not the same. I will say not even 10% of what you need

to optimize if you're a top game in the top charts. Like this app is always between the number one and 10 in health and fitness. If we see the number one to 10 games in the different genres, I'm pretty sure they need to optimize way more than scanning food.
Gotcha. Very good example.
This is a really good snapshot of the comparison between apps and games. So this is like the part of the podcast where you should take a screenshot if you're thinking of like where to continue your journey if you're an entrepreneur or part of a studio. Uh and some interesting things is like the user LCV is one. So we see apps that become part of your lifestyle. For example, of course all of us we use Spotify, but if we want something not as like big, you can look at apps like live 360 which is safety. like you can track where your kids are, where your family is, and so on. And like if we think about that that

business, if you're a mother and your kid is, let's say that your kid is three years old right now and it's going to kindergarten, then they are going to go through primary school, high school, university. Probably dur during those entire years, you're going to be wanting to track where your kid is to make sure that they are safe. And that gives like an LTV of this person of like 12 years from three years old to 15 years old for the kid. That's crazy versus a game as we said like a D1 at the sorry the 35% retention is very good. So that's crazy in terms of like the user acquisition cycle. Uh that's very different between apps and games. Of course, this is only for apps that have like a really good utility, right? Like a really good use case, but that's that's also a founder mindset is like, how can I create something that people are going to need for three years, five years, 12 years?

Um, it's very hard for someone to need a game for so many years,
right? And I I I think when you're selling this app, it probably affects this number of access that you might get for the app as long as the LTV is like long enough.
Yeah, 100%. Because in some cases, we even run the the study of like what will happen if we stop all of the paid user acquisition efforts right now and the app runs by themselves. like let's say that they only have customer support but we don't touch anything marketing we don't optimize ASO we don't post any content on social media we don't run any paid user acquisition so only from app store organic traffic and the conversion rates that we have right now how much money will this app make and the numbers are usually extremely good and it's also realistic you calculate these numbers based on the new users you will get only

from ASO how many of those users will convert And based on the subscriber retention, how long they will stay paying for the app. Usually numbers are extremely good. Versus if you run the same case for games, unless they are getting a really good amount of organic traffic, the game is going to be dead in like 10 months max because of this 35% retention. So like by D60, what what do you have left? 1% of the users.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense if you're a buyer. Yeah.
Uh and then in terms of the growth, we also mentioned this, but to make a like a TLDDR is like for apps, you don't need a lot of capital to grow an app to significant numbers of C five and six figures on MR versus a game, it's very hard, extremely hard to take it to five years if you're not spending anything on PUA. Not even talking about six figures.
You definitely need to spend

you have to Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. even to get off the ground you need to spend on UA like
there are exceptions but this is why there are exceptions. Yeah.
Yeah. One more thing for monetization uh a user will be okay with all of the potential monetization models with paying a subscription with doing a onetime purchase or with seeing ads. The three of them are like kind of doable. But if you're in installing a game that you plan to play for two to three hours, probably you're not going to pay a subscription. So that's also like a an upside on apps in the different like monetization opportunities.
Yeah, I rarely see that. Um not sure if this is going to change. Of course, there are like a lot of like creative people doing games, but from a consumer

perspective, as you said, it's hard to convince a user to pay for a game. There are like again like things like Netflix, but they offer more than just a game. Yeah, I think there was also Google Play Pass
that it didn't get super famous, but from my understanding, it's also like play a pay a subscription and get access to premium games, I think that's definitely good. I feel that they will pay for a console like they will pay for a PlayStation subscription 100%. But pay for a single game that they are not not going to play the next day, I don't think so.
Yeah. Yeah. The only scenario now when when I thought about it, if you're a huge publisher and you like have a huge portfolio, even if you ads, then like, okay, let me pay that five bucks and don't ever show me the the the ads.
Actually,

Roman, that's such a good idea. That's a great that's a great case. Yeah. And apps also do this. Like if you have a health and fitness portfolio with different wellness apps, you have like the to-do list, the meditation app, the sleeping app,
right?
You get a bundle subscription that gets you access to all of them.
That that's a really Yeah. Maybe you should launch your own gaming studio and launch these like bundle packages for different games.
Yeah. Yeah. App store has everything like the tools are there like they've launched a couple of years ago. So yeah, it's a matter of creating enough apps and enough value for the users. That's the hard part.
Yeah, 100%. This is also a really good TLDDR in terms of like comparing both as a snapshot of the opportunity and what we are seeing with apps is that the capital is being allocated with apps in different ways. Um but a big trend is companies from e-commerce are getting into apps because of different reasons

but the strongest one being that they are really good in paid user acquisition in different channels. So it's just another channel unlock for them from monetizing like e-commerce websites to monetizing any sort of apps usually in lifestyle, photo and video categories, health and fitness and so on versus for games.
Wow, this is new actually for me
but makes a lot of sense. Do you have an example of this like e-commerce? Uh
yeah. Um one of my buyers, he sold his e-commerce business last year and he wanted to get into apps because he has his team that he was working with. They are really good in paid user acquisition. Uh he has two or three developers who can like optimize any apps that they acquired and the business is good to go. just like two, three paid marketing talent,

one to two developers. That's it.
So he as the founder, he chooses the apps that he's going to acquire. Then he pass it over to his team to optimize and to scale.
Extremely easy.
The the level of knowledge required is very low.
Gotcha. And for games, yeah, naturally
we're coming experience. Yeah, we coming back to your title uh to your quote actually
that
uh app businesses don't come to gaming. I'll paraphrase right?
Yeah. In games are still getting capital but the trend is going more towards UA financing where the risk for the investor is way lower than VC.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously,

it's extremely hard
to raise.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's
It's getting so hard.
The the founders that I speak with that they were able to raise. It's usually because they had one or two exits in the past, their own exits from their own businesses. Because we also see decks where you see like employees that were in companies that got sold. is not the same if you were the founder or if you were an employee.
So the picture of like I was in this company that got sold is not as interesting versus like my company got sold, I sold more than one company in the past. Uh so yeah, the only founders that I'm seeing that are being able to raise it's that they already sold companies in the past uh or that they had like huge success in the past. But if you're starting from scratch, it's getting super hard. Can we switch roles for a minute?

Yes.
And I want to ask you, Roman, what do you think? What is your 2026 prediction for the gaming and non-gaming industries?
Like I'm pretty optimistic for both. I'll I'll tell you that.
Mhm. I'll also tell you it's going to be easier for apps than for gaming especially um for small teams as as we've discussed and like a lot of what you shared kind of resonates with what I'm seeing for smaller team it is easier to launch an app rather than to launch in your game,
of course,
and also to scale and to exit that that app.
Absolutely. I'm hearing like from the like non-gaming folks,

it's really a lot about finding a niche that like that use case
that that you solve with your app. In gaming it means almost like inventing a new genre which is again like almost
impossible right? So I would emphasize on the difficulty of launching something new and this is where I think apps have an advantage. Yeah, that's a really strong take. But I'm happy that because we kind of agree, we are on the same page.
Then I'll return a favor. What's your prediction that you'll probably say vice versa and say it's going to be a year of gaming, right?
Not really.

No, no. I I I seriously think capital is going to shift from games to apps. I'm already seeing it in my own firm. my buyers are spending more capital into buying apps than into buying games. Uh and then in terms of user acquisition financing, apps also get like really good returns. So I think they're going to allocate more their uh tilting point. They are investing into apps for UA financing. PBX partners too. Bitcraft they also launched their UA financing solution. They are onboarding apps. So it's like welcome guys. Everybody's coming. party is is starting right now and it's gonna happen in 2026.
Yeah. Uh absolutely. But um guys, give us a like if you learn something new. Subscribe. Uh we'll ask Evelyn to answer your questions, so leave them in the comments.
Uh last one, how can people find you,

Evelyn?
I'm on every social media. Hopefully, if you just search my name, Erin M&A, Airline Apps and Games, you're going to find me.
Cool. I'll uh Yeah, I'll leave all of the relevant links in the description of this video. Um, and that Pocket Gamer article, too, then. Thanks a lot, Evelyn. That was a very nice chat, especially with your lens of like M&A. Um, it gives a fresh perspective, right? where we often look at it from like development perspective or user acquisition perspective but it also helps to understand from the buyer and seller perspective. So thanks a lot.
That's cool. Thank you Roman. Thank you everyone for listening. Bye
bye.
Bye.