In-Game Advertising reports and market data
Documents
Turning Privacy Pop-Ups Into Real Profits with CMPs
Consent Management Platforms have transitioned from basic regulatory compliance tools into essential strategic assets for driving advertising revenue.
- Consent signals significantly increase ad revenue, with InMobi data showing eCPMs for consented users are 150% higher in the US and 200% to 300% higher in the EU compared to non-consented users.
- Implementing a Consent Management Platform (CMP) should be treated as a growth lever rather than a compliance burden, as optimized consent flows can achieve opt-in rates of up to 70%.
- Publishers should avoid defaulting to 'check all' for third-party vendors in their CMP, as listing an excessive number of vendors can overwhelm users and negatively impact opt-in rates.
Rewarded Returns
Rewarded Returns explores the evolution of reward-based user acquisition (UA) from its origins as a controversial incentivized traffic tactic to a sophisticated, data-driven pillar of modern mobile game marketing.
- 82% of developers using reward-based user acquisition report that these campaigns outperform traditional channels, with 79% noting stronger long-term retention from rewarded users.
- 77% of mid-sized mobile game developers in the US and UK have integrated reward-based campaigns into their strategies, with 59% planning to increase these budgets in 2025.
- Fraud concerns for rewarded user acquisition have stabilized, with 47% of developers citing risks compared to 46% for traditional UA channels.
The Evolution of Mobile Advertising Explained: How to make Ad revenue by Felix Braberg
The mobile advertising landscape has undergone a significant transformation since the 2008 launch of the App Store, evolving from a nascent ecosystem into a sophisticated marketplace defined by complex mediation platforms.
- Maximize ad revenue by fostering intense competition among ad networks to drive up inventory pricing and capture the highest possible value per impression.
- Integrate six to ten high-performing ad networks through major mediation platforms like AdMob, Unity LevelPlay, or AppLovin MAX to optimize eCPM and fill rates.
- Maintain high inventory efficiency by targeting five to ten rewarded ad impressions per user on a daily basis.
Mobile Gamer 2021: Gen Z Edition
The report examines Generation Z (born 1997 and later) as the newest cohort of mobile gamers, highlighting their purchasing power, digital habits, and advertising preferences.
- Mobile is the dominant gaming platform for Gen Z, with 86% of 18-24-year-olds playing on mobile devices compared to only 42% on consoles and 38% on PCs.
- Gen Z shows a strong preference for rewarded advertising, with 61% of respondents reporting that they enjoy offerwalls within mobile games.
- Traditional advertising formats like banner ads, non-skippable videos, and celebrity endorsements are largely ineffective with this demographic.
Creative Analytics
This analysis examines the mobile advertising landscape during 2023, focusing on the shift toward User-Generated Content (UGC) and video-centric creative strategies.
- Video-centric content now dominates the mobile advertising landscape, accounting for 80% of all creatives in Q3 2023, up from 69% in the previous quarter.
- Total mobile advertisers declined 7% year-over-year to 54,900, though the gaming, entertainment, and lifestyle verticals bucked this trend with continued growth.
- Android remains the primary platform for ad distribution, hosting 68% of the 15.2 million total creatives compared to 32% on iOS.
Intelligence Top Mobile Games Challenges: A User Acquisition, Ad & Product Monetization Report
The mobile gaming landscape heading into 2025 is defined by the critical difficulty of performing within an increasingly crowded market space.
- Market saturation and rising costs per installment are the primary obstacles for 41% of user acquisition managers, driven by intense competition from non-gaming entities.
- Product managers are prioritizing LiveOps as their most significant challenge, with nearly 30% ranking it above traditional concerns like game economy balancing or prototyping.
- The industry is shifting away from high-volume acquisition toward sustainable growth models that prioritize long-term user retention and lifetime value maximization.
Trends Report 2025
Intrinsic in-game advertising functions as a resilient, year-round engagement channel that maintains steady session volumes even during seasonal lulls in traditional media.
- In-game advertising delivers high efficiency, with conversion costs averaging 21% below established goals and brand recall increasing by 20 points.
- North American advertising costs drop by over 25% in the first quarter, providing a cost-effective window for brands to reach highly active players.
- Mobile gaming offers twenty-five times the impression scale of PC and console platforms, while PC and console environments provide deeper immersion with average session lengths of 107 minutes.
Insights into Global Mobile Game Marketing Trends for H1 2025
The first half of 2025 reveals a rapid shift in mobile-game user-acquisition toward AI-driven creative production, with short-form video, live-action clips and in-game audio ads now accounting for the majority of impressions.
- AI-driven creative production has become the industry standard, with generative tools and AI-enhanced playable ads compressing development cycles to under one week.
- Europe leads in market participation with over 43,000 monthly advertisers, while North America maintains the highest creative density at approximately 119 assets per advertiser.
- Casino games have emerged as the second-largest spending category, recording a 14.5% year-over-year increase in market share.
The Intrinsic In-Game Advertising Key Trends Report H1 2025
Intrinsic in-game advertising (IIGA) has transitioned into a measurable, high-impact media channel that allows brands to reach premium gaming environments through buying approaches similar to traditional digital and broadcast media.
- Intrinsic in-game advertising (IIGA) delivers 2,957 attentive seconds per thousand impressions, nearly triple the performance of Facebook Infeed.
- Adopting IIGA drives a 20-point lift in ad recall and a 21% lower cost per acquisition (CPA) compared to standard digital benchmarks.
- Mobile platforms provide 25 times the scale of impressions and greater audience diversity, while PC and console platforms offer superior immersion through longer session lengths.
Gaming: Your Marketing Cheatcode
Gaming has evolved into a horizontal cultural layer encompassing 3.4 billion global players who utilize interactive platforms to build identity and community.
- Gaming commands 3.4 billion players globally, yet receives less than 5% of total media investment, indicating a significant misalignment between consumer attention and advertising spend.
- Custom in-game experiences can generate up to 100x higher attention levels compared to traditional social media platforms.
- Immersive brand strategies are highly effective, with 55% of players expressing interest in acquiring branded virtual items.
Ad placements & Ad monetization trends in Mobile Games - November 2024
The mobile gaming landscape is undergoing a significant shift toward ultra-casual titles that prioritize high-volume ad monetization over traditional in-app purchases.
- Top-performing ultra-casual mobile games are generating daily ad revenues between $25,000 and $100,000 by prioritizing high-volume ad monetization over in-app purchases.
- Developers are successfully scaling titles to millions of daily active users by utilizing short, low-friction gameplay loops that mimic the consumption patterns of short-form video content.
- Vietnamese studios are currently leading the market by blending viral social media trends with aggressive ad placements, including banners, interstitials, and frequent rewarded ads.
Archero 2 Review: The Evolution of gaming & Habby template perfection
Archero 2 represents the latest iteration of Habby’s highly successful game design framework, effectively refining the mechanics that defined its predecessor and other hits like Survivor.io.
- Archero 2 features a more complex and fleshed-out core gameplay loop compared to its predecessor, incorporating expanded progression layers like a 10-slot rune system that allows players to modify skill abilities.
- The game is currently following an Asian-centric soft launch strategy, with significant traction in markets like South Korea, China, and Taiwan, generating approximately 100,000 downloads per day.
- Unlike the original Archero, which relied heavily on ad revenue, Archero 2 has significantly reduced ad placements, limiting users to roughly four rewarded ad opportunities per 24-hour cycle.