🚀 Our 2026 Mobile Gaming Predictions. No fluff!

That's equivalent of trust me, bro.
Trust me, bro. Yeah, trust me, bro. It's going to happen. Trust me, bro.
Trust him, bro. All right, Yakob. Crowd favorites.
Category that I think that can be like the one that's going to be conquered is uh games that are driving a lot of organic traffic and lot of kind of ad revenue are going to be more and more conquered through different genres. This is basically equivalent of what we seen with Disney solitire and jig solitire and all these other It's 4 a.m. And we're rolling the dice. My day [music] drops knowledge made of golden eyes. Failix with ads making those coins rise. Jack up designs worlds chasing the sky. We're the two and a half gamers. The midnight crew talking UA advers and game design too. Mat Felix Shak bringing the insight. We're rocking [music] those vibes till the early day master eyes on the prize. Tracking data through the cyerspace skies. Felix stacks like a wizard in disguise. Jack [music] with us to the high. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey stick got your back. Ads are beautiful.

[music] They light the way. Click it fast. Don't delay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. [music] Aha. [music]
Why are you smiling?
I'm quite excited. I've been wanting to do a predictions episode for seriously since we started and it's the first time I get my way. So, I'm quite happy.
No, it's not. It's not. It's actually second cuz we already did it.
Yeah. Throw your light bomb
if you remember. Yeah, if you remember, it was one of the first episode actually. We went through predictions and some of the even though I hate predictions.
Well, sometimes we have to do something we hate. Welcome for a very special episode. And this is going to be our 2026 2 and a half gamers predictions. This is where you come to stay two and a half steps of the mobile gaming market. I am Felix Probert.
My name is Mat Laric.
And I'm Yakobier.

And we are your hosts. And um Felix, as you might have noticed, we are not the the real gamers. Only Yakob is the real gamer of the of the podcast because you are getting so much prize of on the YouTube in the YouTube comments. Everybody hates me, but everybody loves you, Jakob. So
yeah, everyone loves Jakob. I was like there's like finally the real gamer of the podcast after the last episode.
Oh
Okay, good.
I I will claim here that you know I've never claimed to be a gamer. I'm an add one person
which is which is fine.
Yeah.
I'm not sure why people hate me so much. I mean oh maybe I I know kind of is this your last episode
dude wish list.
Yeah yeah wish list. Oh you you are yeah giving to the steam per steam audience. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.
They don't know that we are doing this because we stealing these things on mobile.
Yeah, now they know. So that's your first prediction. Thank you very much.

Now we should take turns or how do we want to do it? I just, you know, we need we need to do this in a way. It's actually interesting and it's not full of like the the rest of the predictions. That's why I hate it so much.
The link in prediction Bonanza that's currently happening. Should I start?
Honestly, I have no idea what's happening. I didn't
Let me start with what my one of my predictions. What the first admon prediction, right? And then maybe we can go around in a circle and then come back and do our three, right? Okay.
Go. I mean, whatever. I don't care.
There's been a holy grail of ad monetization, right? And I think that this year we could see it happen. And what is this holy grail, right? So we all know that some of the largest ad monetization portfolios in the world is voodoo say games these tend to make anywhere between a day to 1.4 1.5 million but we've had a few breakout hits right and the big holy grail that's never happened yet is basically having

one ad monetized game earning $3 million in one day. So, in 2026, and let me go through this, right? I predict a Chinese mobile game will earn 3 million in ad revenue in a single day. Okay, listen and hear me out and then try to poke holes in this. All right, I've been looking at the Black Friday revenue of the three largest ad monetized games, and the ad revenue numbers from this year are looking crazy surreal. So, as viewers may or not may or may not know, Black Friday is the new Christmas because shopping habits have shifted and everyone's buying now during Black Friday rather than
I don't really get this this agenda that you're talking about for 2 years. It's
dude. It's not. All right. So, ecom and branding advertisers are spending more on Black Friday than ever before. They're not spending as much on banners. So basically, anyone who has a lot of video inventory, like especially in tier

ones, see eCPMs go up a lot. And that's exactly what happened this year. So I looked at I looked at at this year. So I took the eCPMs from some of the games that I manage and I basically plugged it into my estimates for the largest three monetized games. Words of Wonder on the 28th uh this year on Black Friday. I estimate, okay, had 4.8 8 million DAU, 92,000 downloads, and I estimate $912,000 in ad revenue on Black Friday. Lock Blast, 900,000 downloads on Black Friday with 49 million DAU. I estimated to have earned $1.8 million. Then we move on to Vitaong, which advertises and basically monetizes a lot more heavier than Block Blast. 7.8 8 million DAO, 500K downloads, and an estimated $2.1 million in ad earnings on Black Friday this year. So, for context here, Kingshot earned $3.6 million in Aaps on Black

Friday this year. So, my prediction for 2026 is that both Vita Mayong and Block Blast will have a $3 million revenue day.
Yep, exactly. So once again the the prediction is that Blockblast will scale higher. That's the prediction. [clears throat]
Both Vita Mayong and Block Blast will have one day of 2026 where they will earn $3 million in ad revenue in a single day.
Separately.
Yeah.
Yeah. Separately. Okay. At least it's measurable.
Yeah,
man. That was coming like 20 yards from here or whatever.
Yeah. click.
Well, no, look, I I looked at the Black Friday numbers and they're mindblowing. It's just some of these apps are huge.
They are huge. Okay. Interesting.
And where they are now, just to kind of get the baseline. It
doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
No, I just told you like how much they earn on Black Friday, which is most likely when this is going to happen.
How much they earning now?

No. So, Words of Wonder about 800K a day. Uh Blast is anywhere between I have from the
You're just making this up. I know. I I roughly what it is. I know you for
almost what almost 11 years. I I know you're just making this up.
I can see it in your face. I can see in your face. I can
I calculated this
and and now you're looking at your Excel sheet where you're just Oh, let me see. Let me see. Where is it? Where is it? Let me see. Let me plug the numbers currently and like what's what I can see.
I'm going to do this for all your predictions. But anyway,
it's okay. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine.
Yeah. Here's a daily active user base. Here's Vita Mayong has just been crushing it. Like if we look at this for the last
but doesn't matter because Black Friday is is better than than Christmas. H doesn't look like that.
It is for admonish.
Okay, I guess
why I mean this is this is kind of fun.
You're like going to be our predictions. We should just call it I don't know like

making fun of predictions. I know.
What do you mean?
Oh hello. Hello there. I didn't see you. Thank you very much for coming to this episode. Uh, it's brought to you by our sponsors, PVX Partners, the simplest and most effective credit line for marketing. If you're scaling your business, uh, and need funding, here's the deal. With PVX Partners, you can grow your game easily and your business. There's no equity dilution. You can repay as you get paid, and it's flexible and fully tailored to your growth. So you can secure funding in 30 days and get a term sheet in just 24 hours. Don't you wait. Take control of your UA budget without giving away uh a piece of your company. Visit pvxpartners.com and uh see how they can help you grow your game faster and stronger. Don't wait. Go to pvxpartners.com.
Do your predictions ironically then? No, I I was actually trying to trying to think about like what's going to happen because even though I I hate predictions, I think it was Eric Suford

who said like, you know, it's not about the predictions itself. It's just like making this as a habit to just think about what what's going to happen like what are going to be the trends for next year and just write it for yourself or whatever. It's just actually pretty good exercise because you just start to think where are we going from now and where is it going to go next year. The only problem with this is you have no idea what's going to happen next week in gaming industry. So I mean sometimes it's kind of funny. Still my best prediction which I think amused a lot of people from the gaming industry was the one line in the pocket gamer article. Applavin is going to be the top UA channel next year. Everybody was like 10 paragraphs of text I have one sentence became true. So sometimes that's that's all that's something
that was end of last year prediction.
I think it was the year before or something. I mean it wasn't last year but the year before the the year after just Apple absolutely explode.
Okay.
Anyway, so what should we do? Who is who is next or like how I think next one?
I can go next. I can go next. But I'm

sure like which one I'm going to I'm going to start with. I'm going to start maybe with the with the most controversial one. I guess it's going to be connected to our discussion about how everybody's just stealing the the creatives. distilling the creatives because I think the next year when you just launch a new game, if you start producing your own creatives, you're just stupid and not efficient. And I think new games are just going to steal creatives until they reach a certain level of spend or threshold where it's either too dangerous or they can't get away get away with it. Wait a second, there's no app police, so they can get away with it, but it's way more efficient because you don't need creative team. And if your game is basically similar enough to the gaming genres that are killing it, which is met forex,
everybody suddenly shot
and we saw it million times before. Everybody suddenly doing Kingshot. So you don't really you're not going to be

needing like the new creatives. You're just going to like, hey, you know what? This is similar to my creative. This is similar to my game. This is and players don't care. Players don't care. You're just going to steal everything. And I think this is going to happen now more often even in Europe and US most probably know but small small companies European non-Chinese are going to just do exactly this because if you don't do it then you're already losing and I'm going to piss off so many people by this but it's going to happen it's going to
but we're already seeing it right like kind of now like if I was starting a gaming company today I would have a serious discussion being just like should I actually just copy creatives because it's just easier more cost efficient. It's copying. Yeah,
it's not even copying.
Stealing.
You just go you open Facebook ads library and then you you click download. And if you can't do it within ads library and you don't have all the extensions in the Chrome, then you you just use the link and then just post it somewhere where you can actually download and that's it. And you cut off

the end card and here we go. Well, I don't think it's super measurable, but I'm absolutely sure this is going to happen in 2026. Maybe. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. It's not going to be Chinese only because then people realize, you know what? I'm not allergic to money and I want to scale and I'm I want to be on like on the same level field as people from Comic-Con. Isn't in in the west like I mean like the only ones doing it in the west like west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west west is like dream games and player and everybody else can cannot do it
why cannot the dream they copy and do it themselves this is stealing this is like what he's talking about is right clicking and then just saving it right okay okay they're copying this is stealing what we're prediction is right
yes I had one very very interesting discussion a couple weeks ago and we just came to the conclusion that you know this is the most efficient way how to how
until there is no police

and I'm sure you'll start figuring out which companies you can't steal from which ones are the most annoying with it. Have a feeling there's a couple of larger ones if you stay away from that you're going to be fine.
Exactly. And the thing is like how do you even find out that someone is stealing your creatives until it actually magically showcased on the Two and a Half Gamers podcast because you don't really like search the whole gaming industry and all games what are their creatives because you don't you actually don't until it kind of scales right because even even if you have the watermark in the in the creative nobody cares nobody really cares again it's going to piss a lot of But guys, I mean, I know.
All right.
At least this how I see it.
Can't really measure it, but I think you're going to be right.
That's a very
That's equivalent of trust me, bro.
Trust me, bro. [laughter] Yeah, trust me, bro. It's going to happen. Trust me, bro.
Trust him, bro. All right, Yakob. Crowd favorites.
Yeah, let me get this thing because I want to do it a little bit more charty

until I say something.
Yeah, I have few other other stuff with actual visuals, but I just wanted to get this out of my chest.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, what I wanted to say is that we're going to see the continuation of this um trend that's been happening quite a lot lately and I think it's going to be and I even have a category that I think that can be like the one that going to be conquered is uh games that are driving a lot of organic traffic and lot of kind of ad revenue are going to be more and more conquered through different genres. This is basically equivalent of what we've seen with Disney Solitaire and Jig Solitaire and all these other games that are basically putting the name into the genre but monetizing on completely different gameplay. We also see it on stuff like kind Carnival Tycoon and Top Tycoon where it's kind of a theme park idol stuff whatever but it's more like social casino but J solitaire is literally the the and and Disney solitaire the thing which monetizes

why Disney solar Disney solitaire is basically that's like the the solitire category I mean it's part of
it was literally Ella literally tell told noon that this was their premise that we see a lot of traffic on solitaire it's not monetized well we're going to go for it that was there. So, as for the category itself, the one that I'm like literally if I look into the top charts here,
which I'm still missing and it's getting huge amount of volume, you can see right from the bat is basically stuff like subway surfers which is platform runner.
Yeah, the runners are always
or Yeah, that's where like this discussion you have really insane organics but the LTV is non-existent.
Exactly. Same as was happening with Solitaire. Solitaire. Yeah, exactly. So, if you look here into the runners and we go by downloads, subway surfer still chugging something like 15 million downloads a month. Then we have still like big stuff like Geometry Dash 6 and

a half million downloads. Our favorite level devil 6 and a half million. And then we have some again I guess runs and more clones
super adventure stuff like that. But again, I guess the top five or four are like the top ones is for the platformer. If we switch to revenue, the biggest one is actually this kind of a Korean game, which is actually a Powerpuff Girl game.
Ah, as much would like. So yeah, that's uh or at least or maybe that's just a promotion. Cookie cookie run over break whatever is this. Yeah, doesn't know. Uh but anyway, it's still small. It's kind of still very small. If you look at the where is it? If you look at the overall revenue something like 50k a day again this company the sisters is pretty big. It's just that like their main game is ran kingdom not not this thing. So this makes something like 1 and a half million 2 million a month uh steadily.

But if you look at the category itself this is platform
it looks like it's dying.
Yeah it looks like it's dying but it's still doing something like 31 million downloads a month.
I mean
easily. Yeah. Yeah. Like Level Devil's entire amount of D. This is This is basically Subway Surface, Level Devil, and Geometry Dash. Like these like if you look at the chart, it's like these three like where it is like um where we are. Yeah, here we are. So 15, 6 and 1/2, and 6 and 1/2. So basically this and
that's a really good prediction honestly.
Yeah. Yeah. So
one question, Jigsaw Solitaire is like 88% non-organic downloads. Like it's paid download. Yeah, that's that's the good part of that prediction that this probably could also happen on ad side just with different core. So even though like it's platformish something, the core would spin it somewhere different like jig solitaire and still monetize on ads. That's also like the second version of this prediction.
No, no, no. I think the the other part was the jig solitaire is just 90% paid

the way not
there's no organics. There's no organics organics
or very little. Yeah, but he's using the solitaire word and taking the category
fits the prediction.
I mean, if you if you said it's like no no no like no Wi-Fi offline games. If it's like that so people just associate the title with solitary so they download it more by association maybe but
also
again the thing is that
what I think is also happening like it's similar to Domino Dreams also. Domino is even a better example honestly because Domino Dreams again heavy Domino traffic which is completely organic shitty games there and if I go to the Domino category right here you'll see that they are basically crushing it and very similar setup. Yeah, it has a category. We have the downloads one where there's like Domino Legends and there's Domino Dreams and like all these other Domino games. And if you go to revenue, yeah, this is the chart that you're looking for where there's just like Domino doing like

seven billion there's like zero.
Okay. All right.
So this is the example I'm talking about and this is going to happen to more and more categories I think because people will see and this is a valid use case and the point that that's going to be happening on market. J solitaire is the same version by ads not the because it's using again puzzle. Oh, sorry. Jigsaw gameplay in the solid air style.
But in Domino Dreams, there is actually Domino's.
No, this puzzle. You know how do
Okay, but still it's
it's puzzle man.
This is point solitaire in this solitire. There's zero.
He's got a point. He's got a point.
Not zero solid, but fire.
Let's see. Let's see. All right.
Okay, fair.
All right. Give me the screen cuz I'm about to enrage Jakob. So, I predict in 2026 that Block Blast will surpass Garina Freef Fire and Discord to become the largest non-crossplatform mobile

game by DAU.
Are we having this fight again?
Yeah, we're having this fight
this time.
We're going to have this fight because I believe you're extremely wrong.
What?
Everything Everything you say, right? So, here is basically the last 30 days by DAU. You have Roblox 152 million DAU which is insane. Discord 77 million. Right now Freef Fire 71, Supercell Clash Royale 61 million and Block Blast is 54 million active daily active users. But let me read the wrong part.
What?
Where's the wrong part?
What's the wrong part?
Like there's zero of it. Like Garina is still 20 mil more than Blog Blast.
Yeah. Let me let me Yeah. Yeah. Now, right? I said in 2026. So let me read this. January 1st, 2003, 1.3 million DAU. January 1st, 2024, 10 million DAU. January 1st of this year, 2025, 32 million. January 1st, 2026, it looks like it'll be somewhere between

55 to 54 million DAU because it's 50 more 54 million today. So I think by January 1st, 2026, it will be 78 million DAU.
Did you do also prediction on growth between the year?
Yeah. You're also between the Garina Free Fire.
No, it's been we can check it here. But here, let me show you the active user base first for block blast. So all time.
So I guess we cut off blocks from the equation. Yeah,
is just declining anyway already. So again, out of the equation. So we have Garina and Blockbust like trying to be the king of the AU. Yeah, that that's his prediction about
Yeah. Right. So look. So here's Garina free fire going here between
you cannot block into the same
be sure that you you don't try to look at it in July because then you're
But look at this. But look at this right.
Yeah. I mean it's getting Yeah. The difference is getting smaller than it was before. Way smaller than it.
Yeah. Okay.
I would still think like

Yakob is quiet. That's really good sign. I'm not quiet. I'm just saying like,
oh, I'm going to take such a victory laugh. The first day where it passes it in DAU, I'm going to be uh the equivalent of rain dance.
Quickly, quickly, quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Make make screenshot because they
I'll print up I'll print up some t-shirts and I'll take a screenshot of this. I need to call Garina to pick up their game.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, but that's fair. And the lines really like look like it.
Okay. So uh what do you know about web to app which is happening on on the apps in on the in gaps industry in the app space. It's basically a flow where you're sending players through web. You either do a quiz or you just ask questions and just kind of prepare or like onboard the user on web and then send it to app. So basically the other way around as the whole industry talks about because everybody's sending from app to web to get this like web stores

and this is the other way.
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basically do whatever whatever you
already monetize him
you get all the privacy things
it's a part yeah that's a part of the the web flow but you can adjust the the onboarding or the web flow as you want. So you can shorter longer whatever you can do whatever you want and then send it send it to the app. So you don't really need to kind of adjust anything on on boarding in the app or just change any flows and you can test quickly, right? So why is this like such a big thing in app business and it's not actually in games? Why? I mean you have tutorials, right, in games which is kind of okay. Everybody's testing them. There was also one interesting article recently that like players hate tutorials because they suddenly and why suddenly because the new generation is just you know they want to play and they don't care about like tutorial maybe that's like the the way the why it's actually the web to app

flow it doesn't work on games but I pretty sure like it there is a way how to make it work the thing is like is it working because or is it not nobody's work uh working with it because it doesn't work in general or because it's just hard to figure out. So with playables, think about it this way. You you have your own playables as a like a short tutorial or like a def like five different versions of your tutorial which is shorter, longer, whatever. put it on web kind of have your users players play the or in um kind of the play the playable and then send it back to to your game which are now more qualified users basically. Why is this going to work is because it's almost like you are sending players to the web again which is way cheaper. Nobody using it is a different audience and then you can even on iOS that's why apps are doing this anyway. You can get more

data. So it's basically creating like a short like a version of your tutorial but it's it's a playable and it's sitting on a website. You can get more data and then you send basically players to to your game afterwards. This is going to be this is going to be big in 2026 because everybody is doing on apps and nobody's doing it on games. Why?
No one's doing this on games.
No one is doing it on games. You remember
what?
You remember the days when the hyper casual was actually doing this very early on because they were using web traffic to get cheaper CPIs because it was basically cheaper than to send them to to the store. Since then, nobody is doing it. Okay, so this is the next CPI optimization trick on the road map
pretty much. That's how I see it because seriously like you just do a lot of just playables anyway for Apple Lavin or any other ad networks. But you you just showcase it as a as a normal kind of end card connected to video. But just picture this on the website when that's another CPI trick which you don't really

optimize for the app installs but you optimize for conversions on the website which the conversion on the website is
sending you to your to store and the thing is
store instead of again
you use conversion API from Facebook for tracking what happens on website and you use MMP to track these users from the website in the in the MMP afterwards. So you can connect the user from website to your game and have all the data because it's already working on apps and I'm seeing it already and I can I can connect all the dots. So basically you have one side which is the website and the other side which is the app and still kind of connected to through the MMP.
Do we get rid of the store fee this way completely?
I mean you can if you charge players on the website.
Of course I can. I mean I want
you can you can you can it's just depends on like what do you want to actually build. You can you can build a a mini game on website and then eventually just kind of
but this again works only for high LTV games.
I mean

I can imagine scaling casual on this.
I mean it's like the thing is like again like why is nobody doing doing it? That's my like biggest problem. That's my biggest problem.
Why wouldn't this like
well we don't know if it's blockbuster doing it.
I think like this this in my head at least it works for like high LTV IP midcore style whatever game doesn't work for
why don't they do it? Yeah, it's really
for me this is just uh another play on the CPI rather than just caching the the 30% on the website. This is more like the UA play rather than just the the web shops
like web shows just nice nice to have along the way.
Exactly. Yeah. I mean
if you are on the website by the way. Yeah. This because you already you were already there but this is more like the onboarding rather than just the like the LTV player and
playable is the onboarding. Yes, because then you connect what is already in the game and then you just showcase it on the website and then you can on the website have like 10 different playables and have like think of think about it as

landing page for Steam games, whatever. It's the same
and then reroute onto PC client.
Yeah, instead instead. Yeah,
clever.
Can I make a mate meta prediction? Someone will steal a playable and then do this.
I mean, that's the thing. I mean,
we haven't come to the point where people are stealing playables, did we?
Not sure, honestly. But I don't think it's that hard to be honest.
Of course, it's not hard, but like it's not that prevalent as normal creatives. No, like you don't see everybody's running everyone's else playables that much.
You see running videos, but not playable. But anyway, I mean, the thing is like
that's very interesting.
Yeah. Coming from know, by the way,
how do you even know that nobody's using it?
No. How do we know that it's happening later next year?
I we don't know. That's my prediction. It's going to happen.
I know. I know. But how do we know it's happening,
man? Like open LinkedIn in the app business, everybody's talking about the onboarding flow,
but how do we know it's happen? Like how do we see it? You see ads scrolling on

Facebook or like how do we see it?
You see you see in in sensor tower you have one second you have the
it's quite interesting. I'm just kind of curious how do I kind of check on it like if it's
you have the landing page in like connected to videos here. You remember when we when we saw the the porn lady animated for a royal match which was directing to like some weird that's how we see it. So that's how we see it because here the creatives are rerouting to some instead of the app store link. So we would see a ton of creatives running on games rerouting to websites instead
instead of instead of Yes. Exactly. really makes sense
because I'm still I mean I mean it's it's bugging me for a while like why nobody is using this and I'm pretty sure it's going to happen if not like at scale someone figured out and that's how it's going to
all right

crowd-pleaser Yakob what's your next prediction for 2026
jealousy anyway the next uh kind of a big thing in mobile in my opinion is going to be rogue light uh as for the genre I was thinking about like 100%.
So, we're going to see more and more rogue lights and I mean not the conventional ones because normally everybody understands under rogue lights stuff like survivor IO and the usual like three skill selector da da da da da da. That's great and everything but in the end that's not what's going to happen. So, we're going to definitely see some more like um maturing of those mega bonks ball and pits and all the other
speed something like this, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like all these other games which have much more different kind of a rog light course and I'm not even talking about uh games like u stuff like as we talk about where it is here it is umamus which is the game of the year on this

year's game awards mobile game by the way which still is like doing outstandingly high revenue uh
in Japan.
No no no in US man
in US 7. 60% in
7 million in US in November. So yeah,
which is great
for game that's in its original Japanese state. It's like
Yeah. And and then we have stuff like uh this which is the house zero nightmare that just had its biggest spike because they introduced this angel waifu which shoots lasers basically like 800k. But anyway, the thing is that again, this is a rogue bllight deck builder gameplay, which is again just taking Slay the Spire into a mobile game port. So, this is just like screams to me that we're going to see bigger and bigger games that are taking the rogike cores into different pretty much mutations and iterations and they're going to be big. This is already big. Like, this is making millions. Uh the question is we're going to see a western game because all of these games are usually eastern except the steam games. The big

steam rogue lights. I mean the indie ones are all western ones. So we're waiting for a western rogue light like different rog.
There will be like another myame moment where they basically
there's going to be another survivor IO moment.
Yeah, there's going to be another survivor IO moment probably but definitely not from the happy guys. It's going to be from somebody else. And yeah, Russians are one of the like good bets there. Like I'm kind of sure that they're definitely looking into it. That's like one of their expertise. But I wouldn't even singled out guys like Supercell. Supercell could do a very very good rog light if they want.
Yeah, because they're good in stealing different things and putting in on a new platform. So, but they're great in like simplifying things to masses and making them much more approachable, which this definitely is not as you see here. So same goes for umamus. So yeah. So that could be one of the things Scopi could do it. Like I'm guessing Scopi is also

very aggressively trying to diversify to some some like on a different genre now going after some bigger ones. So I don't think so. They'll probably go after puzzle. Maybe maybe they
they must go for like a forex or something.
Yeah, they already have a Forex game on their portfolio, the starter galaxy one. So
I mean sure, but like more.
Yeah, of course. that's there. But again, they're one of the like black horses that could do it. But anyhow, it could be even Voodoo or whoever, you know, there like uh yeah, it's still possible. I'm just saying. But there's going to be more and more push again into this kind of let's say like green grass pretty much genre that's that haven't been conquered that yet. And it's it's giving a lot of innovation like vectors for people to follow and like pretty much go and iterate which hasn't been really explored like I mean both the PC and mobile space. So that's like my kind of biggest grow genre prediction of as for new genre. It's going to pop out by the end of the year hopefully because if nobody will do like a umamusuma iteration people are just

sleeping on it. I'm sorry. Like it's just like so good.
You might have to do it yourself. Yakob.
H yeah I guess so. That could be one of the other things. By the way, one one quick addition to to my like web uh to app variation. See, this is basically the flow for calm on web. Now, what brings you to calm?
Can you do it full screen? Because I think we're still like having a like one more guy screen.
I just Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's better.
There we go.
Do you often struggle to sleep? No, because I don't have any sleep.
Exactly. It doesn't matter, right? No one cares. Yeah.
No one cares. Exactly. And this is Yeah. These are all the kind of onboarding questions. And then Yeah. And then you go and this is just like very quick three or four different question on boarding like they're like so like different apps are
all these they start with.
And you know what's what's great because then at the end there's the payw wall.

So you spend 15 minutes
doing the question and then let's do a subscription. And now you Yeah. Now you need to pay. So obviously of course you you want to do it because then you just lost like 20.
Exact. Exactly. So like this is very very well structured. Again, to your point, Yakob, I think that there might be like a web tutorial or something which then leads the player to actually buy the special offer pack or whatever and then you you buy that and then obviously
I can finally use the billions of tons of meat I farmed from the polar bears in white out survival playables
for examp Yeah. Or just Yeah, exactly. How just out of curiosity like I guess a CPA on web how much cheaper is that than buying something on mobile?
Because this is not exactly a good comparison because the CPA for conversion even if it's like connected to just sending players to to the app store. It's not going to be the same. I mean it's cheaper but like two or 3x maybe. Do we even have the the inventory

in the channels to be able to run something like white on Facebook or Google 200 a day?
Yeah, like this like web to app is like bigger on iOS than like the regular app promot like app installed campaigns or like subscription camp or whatever like actual campaigns we run on games.
So are we going to finally steal something from the apps instead the other way around?
I I really hope so. I really really hope so.
Okay,
because this is just this is genius, right? Like I mean you can you can test so many different tutorials on web without even just implementing them into the game.
No need to like any like app store approval whatever
Exactly. And you don't really need to build it like I like it's just again mind-blowing.
But you still run it from mobile. I mean just through web.
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It's mobile web. Yes. Exactly. Mobile.
We're not talking about browser PC blah blah blah blah.
It can be even I mean it can be both. It can be both. If you can do it on web and then just kind of send the yourself

browse it through mobile like yeah just let's browser
I mean I can continue or you can go and jump
to it Felix if you want.
Yeah. So on the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me some data from AppLin in a purchase per tree. So, my third and final prediction for 2026 is that AppLin stock will be $1,000 per share before the end of the year.
I knew it.
And it's essentially looking at
Yeah, it's not financial advice. This is still a podcast, but I'm right. So, you. Anyway,
so 2023, the stock has 69xed, right? And they're ruthlessly executing perfectly in the mobile space, right? So the crazy thing is why I'm think I'm right on this is I looked in some of the largest games that I managed on the admon side on the 25 largest campaigns in December. So I looked at this yesterday. So a year ago it was two to three campaigns in the 25

largest campaigns on some of these largest ad monetized games was e-commerce. Now pretty much in all tier one geos it's 15 to 20 e-commerce campaigns there is in the top 25. And it's not the e-commerce you think. It's stuff that's high ticket order value. So, it's like fire extinguishers, rugs, and clothes. And
clothes. Especially
Yeah. Especially clothes. And they're just killing it. And e-commerce.
Fire extinguishers.
Yeah. I mean,
yeah. Yeah.
And these, you know, you know, you know how we always joke about like how is this like the gaming industry is wild west?
Yeah.
Now it's becoming a wild west with all the all the e-commerce stuff pushing it so much.
Yeah. So yes, I guess extinguishers.
Who's not buying a fire extinguisher?
You don't you don't care about your family. You need one with that beautiful tree behind you. It's going to catch fire. Oh, I wish I bought the fire extinguisher. I saw
Felix. It's fake. It's fake. So it's fake.
It won't burn. [laughter]

All right.
And Jesus. This is
Yeah. But basically, this says to me that there's couple things that's going to happen on the back of this, right?
But honestly, man, when's this 1,000 stocks going to happen? Because if it's just end of the year, I think the growth isn't that big if you count it up.
What are you talking about?
Like if you spread it like if they are already 700 now and just going to hit 1k by the end of the year. It's kind of slow growth compared to the last year's growth.
I mean they're $250 billion, right? Like you're not going to double that, right?
Yeah. I'm just saying like they doubled it last year. So this is like got to be
Yeah. But I can even go a step further because it looks like the e-commerce stuff is working cuz it's increasing. And I can even probably say that I think Apple will be a trillion dollar company one day because
one day, come on. One day, man. One day. By 2022. By 2028,
one day I'm going to be dead. That's for sure. Unfortunately. Unfortunately, I'm I'm scared.
Probably the next year when we ask you to do another prediction. That's the day you die.
Oh, yeah. Most probably. Most most

probably. Yeah, that's that's going to be my
Maybe I should also do stocks.
No, I'm not doing stocks. But I'm actually I'm going to actually piggy back on your first prediction, Yakob, because we already talked about this also with the solidair stuff. And look at this. This started to happen in August
again. We need to make it a little bit bigger.
Bigger sick because then
getting sabotaged.
Yep.
Better.
No, it's just different layouts in in in Riverside. So, you know, you don't know what you're looking at.
Some playables. He is doing puzzle arts
and this exactly is what I'm I'm trying to say
feeling our again.
This is the thing. So you remember I was talking about uh this with I think it was the creative trends but this was in August. So basically 1 2 3 4 5 even non- gaming all of these even was using this 3x3 puzzle as a playable. So look, even hobby had one.
Mhm.
See whittle defender

jig solitire
kind of exactly right. So and you remember we saw all of these one sec. We we have obviously this one which is
exactly that. Yeah.
You even have my beautiful background here.
Yeah. Yeah. You have exactly that's your break
subliminal messaging.
Yeah. So we have all of these and we have even more. I think there's one new voodoo game which is hey I can I can kind of look at this right we have this jigsaw and then even the this is your
your background so so what's what's h what's going to happen with all these different genres what you mentioned this on the game design side but I'm seeing this as the lever for scaling on playable since applian is going to be going very aggressively towards 1k stock so I mean there's No stopping. So, how do you scale? Then you you get all these

really high scaling apps and games and use it as an end card, which is a playable end card, and you build it as a template, and it's like 7 10 clicks, whatever. And it's highly efficient. Who is doing
seven 10 clicks to get through that So, you you're sure to misclick. That's what you wanted to say.
I mean, that's that's your interpretation, but it's fine. Anyway,
shareholders need money, baby. Exactly. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So like that's going to be the the the way how you can go about like the the scale and how you you don't go really to the all the misleading fake stuff because we already have fake games or fake ads in casual or metry. I mean we just looked at one which is the saving the king. This is another layer because you use 20 40 50 60. Yes we know. Yes we know here. as we know. So this is going to be basically the starting point. You will have like templates of the high

scaling genres and you use it immediately within like your playable kind of suite because you know that as we discussed on the on the podcast you need like five 10 playables a month or something that's really like high like the diversity of playables which is pretty hard to do because if you have one like one playable it takes like two weeks to to make iterations whatever. you build this this template 30 minutes maybe like one day and you scale on the back of of this easily and not only like you you're going to see it within big games like we see it now with match villains and and royal match but even in in August middle defender and even was using it this is this is going to be the next level playable scaling
m and uh so it's basically like a 4x modification basically what was they're doing
I'm not sure if it's a 4x modification because you're taking different genres and using this them as a playables, but it's not not every genre. It's just the other way around of the onboarding again. Like you're using gates in your

onboarding and in creatives. You don't really need this in your onboarding.
Yeah. Because on boarding you're already there and like past the subscription apps. So it's like
No, no, no, no, no. I don't No, no, no. Like this is the playable which is an actual end card but it's it's a template that you can borrow from different different genres without you actually having to implement them into the game as like you have kingshot taking thronfall that you take jig solitary put it as a playable end car you scale because that's suddenly the the biggest trend.
So I told my boss I [music] made a playable and playable maker and he said to me what language did you code it in? And I said, "I don't know. With Playable Maker, all you do is [music] drag, drop, click, and it does it all for you." So again, he said, "What language did you make it in?" I went, "I don't know, [music] English." At the end of the day, as long as the playable maker does it all for you, why [music] do you care? It's just like magic.
Use saving as a template in the in the

in the playable and you scale on the back of that because that's trending at the moment. basically capitalizing on whatever human hive mind thing is working right now
building as as a playable
right
okay
you still don't you still don't get it
no no I get it I get it I just like trying to wrap it up
thinking about it
in my head because it's uh again I just want to summarize it in the forex analogy what happened here
yeah so you basically using the or or doing what uh recently idle miner did they just did
so we basically skipped the fake creative step and went directly into the fake on boarding already which is after it the real stuff pretty much because fake on boarding is the playable. So we don't have the fake creative we go directly into the fake on boarding and then after fake on boarding we go into like the real game.
Going to be complicated year.
It's just going to be super complicated year.
No because if you think about it like there's zero innovation still on the on the UA side in terms of like the channels and and stuff. You need to like

think about like what's what's next, right? Of course, we need to think about what's next. The problem is again that uh all of these things that you're saying is like only very few companies and people are able to pull this off. I mean like talking like 15% of the market. Just saying.
You think 50%
15
15
15
because what because it's too complicated to pull off. I mean I'm not saying it's it's easy.
If it will be so easy to pull off, everybody will be running already the forex strategy which is just
Yeah, I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. But and and that's why I have this this brainstorming question for for us. But you need to you need to finish your last prediction, Jakob.
And then I have one last
prediction. Take it home. Yakob,
it's a loading. That's the problem.
Okay. So in the meantime, I have this brainstorming question because which genre is going to be next that is using the forex and social casino onboarding like the sophisticated onboarding where it's like high high LTV, high CPI and

like nobody wants to kind of like download the forex part because then you need to kind of mislead players into the game with Kingshot ad and then you present the Forex after. asking who's going to be the next kafir like what next genre
not kafir because kafir is doing the social casino right so because I've seen these predictions like we're going to see more misleading like ads like going to hybrid casual I mean that's like the hybrid casual doesn't need this because they have the hyper casual CPI already so they don't really need this and then oh it's going to be in puzzle well met is already having this because like all the saving the the king and freezing families right so like what is next That's like the brainstorming question. So, I hope we can I hope
we can at least figure out.
It's the rogue lights that figure it out.
I mean, to be fair,
Archer Archer doesn't have like very nice CPIs.
You used to, right, when it first came out, right? Or no?
I mean, yeah, but this was like centuries ago.
Yeah, it was centuries ago. And keep in

mind that every single hobby game just went downhill from the day it
because it's super high super high. I mean, like you can't just go about it. like it's still doing good, but it's not something that they're like they just need to keep pushing out games otherwise they're kind of like this whole machine's going to stop.
Do you think a fake on boarding like that would work for a rogue like game like doing an idol or
of course if you are able to do it like it works for everyone that you can kind of pull it off properly. It's just that like it's hard to pull off.
You need high LTV games and then with kind of really high CPI which archer 2 is actually. Anyway, my last one which hopefully this can load and we can go into more specific is that AI thing is going to continue into marketing as usual. But now the important stuff that I want to talk about that we're going to see like the original prediction was 50% of creative going to be AIdriven by end of next year. That's what
what was original. I think it was like 50% of the companies are going to use it, not 50% of
I guess I would upgrade it even there. Like it's 50% of the all the creatives

are going to be driven by AI that's there. Marketing will still be the single biggest growth vector of AI impact on the mobile game industry. So we're we're not going to see yet some kind of super AI based game. AI based what they were you know stuff like I don't know Doom did where they switched from 2D to 3D or Clash Royale did when they did like synchronous multiplayer and all these other technological achievements that were done by technology and enable different genres that's not going to happen for next year but marketing itself it's still going to be pretty pretty big because as I said and yeah finally we loaded so we can look into this people are going to do it more custom and it's going to be better and better because we're going to switch to open- source AI. So, this is one of those things that I've been playing around with here. And just to kind of give you an example how this looks. So,
please don't tell me it ends in a waifu.
This ends with this like my signature made snow leopard warrior.
You made this?
Yeah, I I made this.

It looks like me. Is it me?
But just to just to show you this kind of a process of like these are actually multiple generations as you see here. For instance, you see how pretty much we're doing after generation corrections and stuff like with AI. This is all AI. This is not like different program. This is just AI with his eyes, with his face, with his hands and stuff like that. Like one image is just like multiple corrections and multiple things. And this is again completely homemade. And you see how many different things I have here that I can tinker with. All the wireless stuff is just turned off by the way because I can just turn it on if I want and do completely different things with it and all custom made. And by the way, this thing actually is done through two models, not one because one is an end model.
That's not enough one.
Yeah, it's like it cannot like this. Like for instance, if you go check GP on generally just like it. Yeah. So in order to get this and by the way, see

how like the first generation is so like
Yeah,
it's very This is the end. Yeah. So, the big prediction is that we're going to see stuff I'm not going to see, but we're going to see the quality increase sharply as people will be able to switch on into all of these kind of open-source AI models in marketing creative. So, the stuff that we can go out and like comment every single month like, oh yeah, this is and like the water is there and whatever ice steak is not cooking properly and blah blah blah blah blah. So that's going to be to the point where we won't be able to see because it's just going to be so streamlined and better.
So you're saying next year AI creatives are going to be qualitywise
unrecognizable ones.
Yeah.
From the proper the ones that I show.
I'm already I'm already screwed there. So yeah.
Yeah, you're f Yeah.
If I can do it, guys, for sure. And this is this is just the image modality. You need to go from image to the video modality, of course. video afterwards.
Don't get me wrong, this can pop

out anything. It can pop out sound, video assets, image, video, whatever.
Yeah. Just doing it from like locally and some people are still doing it.
Yeah. Like we like we heard you buy more, you know, graphic cards instead of programmers.
Yeah. [laughter]
Yes. Exactly.
Still still marketing. Still marketing the biggest impact.
I think that's a good insight. Yeah. It's marketing that's going to benefit next year from the AI boom, not actual developers of the game to the same degree, right?
The optimizations, the smart ones, but it's not going to be revolutionary.
Revolutionary? No. But I think uh
it's going to be nice to have
want to take us home.
Yes. I hate this episode already. [laughter] Thank you very much for for bearing with us until the very end. Of course, please comment what do you think about the predictions like who and why you love the most. And of course, it's Jakob. So, thank you very much and join the Slack channel and yeah, just hang around. We love you.

Thank you very much for 2025. It was an interesting year again and it's going to be even crazier 2026. See you next time. Bye-bye.
Bye. Heat. Heat.
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