Advertising reports and market data
Documents
Insights into Marketing Trends of Global Mobile Games
Global mobile game marketing reached a pivotal turning point in the second quarter of 2023, characterized by a record-breaking surge in creative volume.
- In Q2 2023, the mobile gaming industry saw a record surge of 9.3 million new creatives, which accounted for nearly 75% of all active advertisements.
- Market leaders like Honkai: Star Rail and MONOPOLY GO! achieved rapid global growth by maintaining high-frequency creative refreshes, with new assets making up over 60% of their advertising portfolios.
- While iOS casual game installs cost $2.23 compared to $0.63 on Android, both platforms yielded a comparable seven-day return on ad spend of approximately 7.7%.
Gameloft's Claudia Trujillo On Tuning-Up The Truth About ASO And UA
App Store Optimization and User Acquisition function as deeply interconnected pillars of mobile game growth rather than independent silos.
- Paid user acquisition (UA) directly impacts organic search visibility because increased download volume signals store algorithms to boost the game's organic ranking.
- Poor conversion rates negatively impact UA costs; store algorithms prioritize games with higher conversion rates, forcing competitors with lower rates to bid higher for the same ad placements.
- Maintaining an average rating of at least 4.1 stars is critical, as store algorithms and editorial teams favor highly-rated games, making it cheaper to secure ad placements and featuring opportunities.
Best Advertising Networks for Hyper and Hybrid Games in 2023
The transition from hyper-casual to hybrid-casual gaming represents a strategic evolution in the mobile game industry, driven by the need for sustainable growth and diversified revenue streams.
- The mobile gaming industry is shifting from hyper-casual to hybrid-casual models to combat declining eCPMs, evidenced by a 34% increase in in-app purchase (IAP) revenue.
- Hybrid-casual success requires moving beyond short-term CPI metrics to blended ROAS campaigns that account for both ad revenue and long-term IAP value.
- Developers should utilize mediation platforms like AppLovin or Unity to manage the complex data tracking necessary for optimizing long-term user value.
Product Madness’ Piyush Mishra On Smart Approaches And Seismic Shifts In A Privacy-First Market
The mobile gaming industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation as privacy-centric regulations, most notably Apple’s deprecation of the Identifier for Advertisers, dismantle traditional user-level tracking and attribution models.
- The deprecation of Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) has rendered traditional user-level tracking obsolete, forcing a shift from data-obsessed optimization to a creative-first marketing strategy.
- Growth marketers must prioritize high-performing, contextually relevant assets and synchronized landing pages to maintain conversion rates in the absence of granular tracking data.
- Developers should pivot toward brand building to foster user trust and shorten conversion windows, reducing the reliance on precise tracking by cultivating a loyal, direct audience.
Kooapps’ CK Wang And Mintegral’s Shobeir Shobeiri On Increasing ARPDAU By 40-80% With In-App Bidding
The mobile gaming industry is undergoing a strategic shift toward a unified casual model that blends traditional hyper-casual mechanics with deeper meta-progression and live events.
- Transitioning from manual, waterfall-based ad management to automated in-app bidding has enabled publishers to achieve ARPDAU increases ranging from 20% to 80%.
- The mobile gaming industry is shifting toward a hybrid model that combines hyper-casual mechanics with deeper meta-progression and live events to improve retention.
- Developers are leveraging rigorous A/B testing of interactive formats, such as playable ads, to optimize engagement and revenue performance.
Rethinking Value During a Cost of Living Crisis
The global cost of living crisis is fundamentally reshaping consumer behavior, forcing a transition from traditional consumption patterns toward a redefined, multifaceted concept of value.
- 81% of consumers report being directly impacted by the current economic climate, necessitating a shift from traditional price-based messaging to strategies that emphasize personal agency and shared values.
- Social capital is increasingly derived from 'knowledge flexing' and DIY expertise rather than material acquisition, with 69% of social media users in the US and UK relying on influencers to find cost-effective alternatives.
- Consumers are adopting 'de-influencing' and 'artisanal peacocking' to gain status through the ability to navigate economic constraints, signaling a move away from luxury spending as a primary status symbol.
The Golden Rule of Game Promotion: No One Cares About Your Game
The fundamental challenge for independent game developers is overcoming the inherent lack of audience awareness that plagues new titles.
- Assume total public indifference toward your game and focus exclusively on capturing the attention of cold audiences who have no prior knowledge of your project.
- Prioritize front-loading promotional content by ensuring trailers and social posts deliver a compelling hook within the first few seconds to minimize viewer attrition.
- Treat every piece of communication as a standalone introduction, avoiding the assumption that the audience has seen previous updates or possesses existing context.
Outfit7’s Nina Oblak & Kayzen’s Ryan Goeden On Harnessing Split Testing To Develop Winning Campaigns
Rigorous A/B testing serves as the cornerstone of successful mobile game development and user acquisition, transforming the production cycle from a speculative process into a data-validated strategy.
- Outfit7 utilizes a 'fake store' environment—a non-live landing page equipped with heat maps—to track user behavior, such as screenshot engagement and review reading, before a player reaches the actual app store.
- To ensure A/B test reliability, Outfit7 maintains a strict control environment by ensuring equal traffic splits across variables, including consistent traffic mixes across platforms, countries, and game genres to avoid bias.
- When evaluating A/B test winners, Outfit7 now incorporates market-specific revenue data, ensuring that high-volume install sources from lower-value markets do not disproportionately influence the decision-making process.
Finding Your Voice on TikTok
TikTok serves as a high-conversion marketing channel for game developers, offering a unique opportunity to drive Steam wishlist growth through organic, non-paid content.
- Prioritize low-production, authentic content over polished corporate trailers to bypass audience skepticism and drive organic Steam wishlist growth.
- Optimize for the TikTok algorithm by focusing on watch time and completion rates, utilizing a clear setup-and-payoff narrative structure.
- Keep videos between 15 and 30 seconds long, ensuring an immediate visual hook within the first second to capture viewer attention.
Türkiye Game Market: 2022 Report
The 2022 Turkish gaming market underwent a significant transition, moving from a period of rapid, speculative growth toward a more mature, quality-focused ecosystem.
- Istanbul attracted $424.7 million in gaming investment across 23 deals in 2022, cementing its status as a top-tier global hub for startups.
- The Turkish gaming market experienced a contraction in 2022, with total turnover falling to $625 million amid global economic instability and domestic currency depreciation.
- Studios are pivoting away from the hyper-casual model toward hybrid-casual, PC, and console development to prioritize long-term intellectual property and sustainable business models.
Smadex’s Philip Gontier On Scaling With SKAN 4.0 And The Benefits Of Privacy-Centric Platforms
The mobile advertising industry is currently undergoing a significant transition as privacy regulations and the deprecation of probabilistic matching force marketers to adopt new attribution and targeting strategies.
- The mobile advertising industry is transitioning away from device-level identifiers and probabilistic matching toward privacy-centric frameworks that prioritize contextual signals, first-party data, and creative optimization.
- SKAdNetwork 4.0 is the essential successor to legacy attribution methods, with significant traffic scaling expected by Q3 and Q4 as publisher adoption increases.
- Advertisers are currently collaborating with mobile measurement partners to integrate new postback structures and build optimization models in preparation for the eventual sunsetting of fingerprinting.
Creadit's Luis Leon On Generating Impressive Creatives Without Breaking The Bank
Creative production in the gaming industry has shifted from high-budget, traditional studio output to a performance-driven model that prioritizes strategic iteration and audience engagement.
- Creative production has shifted from high-budget studio output to a performance-driven model where partners act as strategic advisors to align assets with specific platform requirements.
- Efficiency is maximized through a modular strategy that repurposes a single master asset into multiple variations, allowing for high-volume A/B testing without increasing production costs.
- Raw, mobile-shot, ephemeral content often outperforms highly polished traditional advertisements because it appears more authentic to users on platforms like TikTok.