In-Game Advertising reports and market data
Documents
🎙️ Mobile Ad Monetization basics: What every studio gets wrong by Felix Braberg
Mobile ad monetization requires a shift in focus from vanity metrics like eCPM to a holistic understanding of revenue generation.
- Prioritize Ad ARPDAU (Ad Revenue Per Daily Active User) as the primary performance metric, as focusing solely on eCPM is misleading because high rates can be offset by low fill rates.
- Implement a mediation platform to create a competitive marketplace, which can effectively double revenue compared to relying on a single ad network.
- Limit ad frequency to five to seven views per user, as the value of impressions diminishes significantly beyond this point and excessive ads damage long-term retention.
Session: The Power Of Rewarded: Building Meaningful Connections Between Players & Games.
The primary objective of rewarded user acquisition is to foster meaningful, long-term connections between players and games by integrating incentive structures directly into the core gameplay loop.
- Optimized rewarded user acquisition flows can increase conversion rates by 20% to 30% while significantly improving day-one and day-30 retention and ARPPU.
- Collaborative, iterative reward strategies have enabled hybrid-casual advertisers to scale ad spend by nearly 400% while simultaneously increasing total user volume and revenue.
- Top-performing hybrid-casual titles utilizing these reward models are achieving day-one retention rates exceeding 70% and day-30 retention rates near 20%.
Curated Panel: How Brands & Publishers Are Navigating The New Gaming Media Landscape In 2026.
The gaming media landscape in 2026 is undergoing a fundamental transition as publishers and brands move away from a singular focus on performance-based advertising toward more sophisticated, brand-centric strategies.
- The gaming media landscape in 2026 is shifting from performance-based advertising to brand-centric strategies that prioritize user retention and revenue diversification.
- Publishers are increasingly integrating non-intrusive, custom in-game placements to keep users within their ecosystems and prevent churn to external competitors.
- Measurement is evolving beyond simple app-install KPIs to include first-party data, brand lift studies, and attention-based metrics that align with broader marketing objectives.
Session: Rewarded UA In 2026: The Growth Playbook - Jan Sommerfeld, Almedia.
Rewarded user acquisition (UA) is evolving from a simple volume-based strategy into a sophisticated, data-driven channel that functions as a long-term loyalty program.
- Rewarded user acquisition has shifted from focusing on install volume to prioritizing long-term engagement, with platforms now extending reward windows from 30 days to 90 days and beyond to drive Day 360 performance.
- The US market for rewarded platforms has grown to an estimated 100 to 150 million users, with major players like Freecash acquiring 3 to 4 million users per month and reaching a total user base of 60 million.
- Modern rewarded platforms now utilize automated bidding systems, such as Almedia's 'Max ROAS,' which allow advertisers to define return-on-ad-spend targets rather than manually managing individual CPIs.
Session: What’s Really Limiting Publisher Monetisation Today - Olga Zharuk, TeqBlaze.
Modern mobile game monetization is increasingly hindered by an overly complex ad technology stack that strips publishers of essential control over their own revenue streams.
- The modern mobile ad tech stack has become overly fragmented, forcing publishers to rely on multiple vendors and mediation platforms that prioritize their own internal metrics over the publisher's long-term business health.
- Current monetization infrastructure functions as a 'black box,' preventing publishers from auditing auction outcomes, diagnosing revenue fluctuations, or maintaining granular control over the specific ads displayed in their apps.
- Loss of control over the ad stack creates operational risks, including the unintentional promotion of direct competitors and the delivery of poor-quality, long-form ads that negatively impact player retention.
Curated Panel: The Privacy-First Advantage: Smarter Data, Smarter Monetization In 2026.
By 2026, privacy compliance has transitioned from a mere legal obligation into a fundamental operational strategy that dictates the success of monetization and user experience within the gaming industry.
- Privacy compliance has evolved from a legal checkbox into a core component of the monetization stack, with non-compliance leading to significant financial penalties, such as the $1.4 million fine issued to Jam City for CCPA violations.
- Publishers must shift from passive data collection to active activation of first-party data to improve ad targeting, eCPMs, and overall monetization strategies.
- Major ad networks, including Google, have moved toward making the sharing of publisher first-party data a default requirement to improve ad relevance and player journey insights.
🎯 Mobile Ad Monetization Checklist: From Soft Launch to Scale by Felix Braberg
This guide provides a strategic framework for mobile game developers to implement and scale ad monetization, covering the transition from soft launch to full-scale operations.
- Prioritize user retention by enforcing strict ad creative standards, as networks often default to intrusive, long-form end cards that degrade the user experience.
- During soft launch, target a 45% viewer rate for rewarded video ads and a 70% viewer rate for interstitials to balance monetization with retention.
- Maintain an updated app-ads.txt file to ensure full access to reseller demand and maximize potential ad revenue.
Sandloop review: It looks simple. That’s the point.
Sandloop, a physics-based sorting game published by Voodoo, exemplifies the effectiveness of a minimalist design philosophy in the hyper-casual mobile market.
- Sandloop generates $60,000 to $120,000 in daily ad revenue from approximately 50,000 daily downloads.
- The game utilizes a high-spend acquisition model with $200,000 in daily marketing costs, targeting a three-month payback period.
- To minimize initial user churn, the game delays all monetization and menu access until level 20.
🚀 Pixel Flow! Review: from 0 to $1mil+/day in 90 days
Pixel Flow has emerged as a significant success within the Turkish mobile gaming sector, achieving a rapid ascent to seven-figure daily revenue within three months of its September launch.
- Pixel Flow achieved a $300 million annual run rate and $1 million in daily revenue within 90 days of its September launch.
- The game scales to approximately 200,000 daily downloads by utilizing aggressive user acquisition strategies on platforms like AppLovin and Mintegral.
- Developers reduced cost-per-install metrics by bypassing traditional soft launches in favor of high-velocity creative testing using AI-generated and pop-culture-adjacent assets.
🤔 What if games paid players back?
The gaming industry is undergoing a fundamental shift toward embedded financial infrastructure, moving away from traditional monetization models that rely exclusively on heavy in-app purchases.
- Integrating embedded financial infrastructure allows developers to transition from traditional in-app purchase models to systems that facilitate real-world payouts.
- Ad revenue sharing models that distribute Bitcoin rewards to players can increase user retention rates by up to 180 percent.
- The shift toward loyalty-based models replaces 'churn-and-burn' acquisition strategies, significantly increasing the long-term lifetime value of users.
TWIG #365 Golden Twig Awards: The Best, Worst, and Weirdest Moves in Games This Year
The gaming industry in 2025 is defined by a volatile landscape of high-stakes acquisitions, structural instability, and a fundamental misalignment between venture capital expectations and studio performance.
- The 2025 gaming industry is shifting away from venture capital-backed models toward funding led by established publishers, following the failure of numerous studios that attempted to replicate the success of giants like Riot or Blizzard.
- Companies are increasingly bypassing traditional distribution channels by launching direct-to-consumer web stores to mitigate structural instability and high-stakes acquisition volatility.
- Audience growth has stagnated, forcing publishers to pivot from acquisition to optimizing existing user bases through new advertising models, such as Roblox’s programmatic integration with Amazon DSP.
↪️ Simple ARROW design FTW. You don't need super high-polished art to make $250k/day!
The mobile gaming landscape increasingly favors functional, minimalist design over high-fidelity aesthetics, as evidenced by the rapid ascent of Arrow Puzzle Escape.
- Arrow Puzzle Escape achieved 4 million daily active users and $250,000 in daily revenue within four months by prioritizing functional, minimalist 2D design over high-fidelity art.
- The game's success relies on a distribution-first model that utilizes AI-assisted level design and creative generation to rapidly optimize for lower cost-per-install metrics.
- Monetization is driven by a high volume of interstitial and rewarded video advertisements, leveraging the game's low barrier to entry to maintain profitability across the US, Japan, and European markets.