Marketing reports and market data
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Documents
Two & a Half Gamers63 min
5 tips for killer UA, Soft launch Sonar vol3, Black Friday secret admon tips (#85)
Mobile gaming monetization and user acquisition strategies are currently undergoing a significant shift, driven by evolving consumer behavior and heightened competition.
- During Black Friday, eCPM rates historically increase by 30% to 50%, requiring ad monetization managers to shift from long-term seasonal planning to maximizing revenue during the specific one-to-two-day peak.
- To mitigate risk in User Acquisition, maintain a balanced channel mix (e.g., 20-25% per channel) rather than over-relying on a single platform, as competitors will exploit your lack of diversification.
- When localizing creative assets, prioritize the top 10 revenue-generating countries and calculate the cost versus a potential 10% to 20% revenue uplift, utilizing AI tools to keep production costs manageable.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Thomas Brush11 min
Why Your Indie Game Demo Is EVERYTHING
The primary purpose of a game prototype is to serve as a marketable asset that can secure funding or build an audience before the full game is completed.
- A game prototype must function as a high-value, hyper-polished 15-minute experience that serves as a marketable asset to secure funding or build an audience.
- The 'Trinity Hook' strategy requires integrating mechanical, story, and visual elements to create a central value proposition, as relying on a single hook increases market risk.
- Steam wishlists generated by a strong demo serve as a critical proxy for future commercial performance and are a primary metric for validating a game's market viability.
Thomas BrushMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers59 min
How to pick Admon partners, Ads library bonanza & research, Game review radar vol2 (#80)
Optimizing mobile game monetization requires a disciplined, data-centric approach that prioritizes independent performance metrics over the recommendations of ad network representatives.
- When managing an ad monetization stack, remove or replace any ad network that generates less than 5% of total revenue to ensure networks are effectively competing and bidding up prices.
- To optimize ad network performance without direct contact, launch networks via A/B tests to verify positive impacts on ARPDAU before rolling out to 100% of traffic.
- Night Crows has demonstrated significant stability in the Korean market, maintaining approximately $25 million in monthly mobile revenue despite a sharp decline in monthly downloads from 300,000 to 30,000.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers50 min
Meta Aggregated Event Measurement, Harry Potter flop in the West, Admon apocalypse tests (#73)
The digital advertising landscape is undergoing a significant contraction as Google Ad Manager prepares to remove AdX demand for resellers on October 31.
- Google’s upcoming removal of Google Ad Manager reseller demand and the transition to bidding on October 31st is expected to cause a 5% to 12% revenue decline for publishers.
- Meta’s new Aggregated Event Measurement tool is causing significant implementation challenges and confusion, with some practitioners reporting that it conflicts with existing SKAdNetwork measurement.
- Meta is increasingly pushing for the integration of its own SDK to replace or bypass Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs), raising concerns regarding data impartiality and reliance on Meta's internal statistical modeling.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers42 min
South Korea Live Special: Market Review, Marketing strategies, UA channels, Creatives & Top games
South Korea stands as the world’s fourth-largest gaming market, contributing 7.6% to the global industry and accounting for 70% of the nation’s cultural content revenue.
- South Korea is the world's fourth-largest gaming market, representing 7.6% of the global industry and 70% of the nation's cultural content revenue.
- The market features a 92% mobile penetration rate and high geographic density, with 50% of the population concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area.
- User demographics are split by platform and genre: older users (30–50) favor Android for hardcore MMORPGs, while younger players increasingly prefer iOS for hybrid-casual titles.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers50 min
Creatives end cards arms-race, why is soft launching in US a terrible idea? Night crows review (#69)
The mobile gaming industry is currently grappling with an escalation in aggressive advertising tactics, specifically regarding rewarded ad end cards.
- Aggressive rewarded ad end cards, including 45-second durations and deceptive design patterns, are actively degrading player retention and brand sentiment.
- Publishers should prioritize long-term player health over short-term click-through metrics by using negative user feedback to demand more equitable ad formats from network partners.
- Soft-launching in the U.S. is often misguided due to high acquisition costs and intense competition that obscure accurate performance data.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers56 min
Boost your UA with channel diversification & high performing creative frameworks w/ Mistplay (#67)
Loyalty-driven engagement serves as a primary engine for sustainable user acquisition and long-term lifetime value in the mobile gaming sector.
- Mistplay operates as a performance-driven loyalty app with a team of approximately 200 people, leveraging data analytics as the central stakeholder for all product, sales, and commercial decision-making.
- Effective creative testing requires a high volume of output, with the team aiming to test 10 to 14 new creatives per week, totaling 40 to 50 per month to combat creative fatigue.
- When evaluating new UA partners or testing campaigns, the team typically allocates a 1 to 2-month window to move through learning, optimization, and scaling phases.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers52 min
Admon smoky backroom, Midcore UA step up with Viva La Dirt League, Honkai: Star Rail Review (#63)
AdMob is mandating a transition to real-time bidding auctions by October 31, 2023, effectively ending the practice of manual placement refreshing.
- AdMob will mandate a transition to real-time bidding auctions by October 31, 2023, effectively ending manual placement refreshing and forcing publishers to adopt automated, mediation-driven monetization.
- The mediation market is consolidating into a duopoly between Google and major third-party platforms like AppLovin Max and ironSource, requiring developers to focus on inventory efficiency rather than legacy optimization hacks.
- Honkai: Star Rail generated over $40 million in its first week with 20 million pre-registrations, demonstrating that high-production, console-quality mobile experiences are driving significant market returns.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers53 min
11 UA & Creative tips, 🦩 unleash your inner UA flamboyance (#59)
Modern user acquisition strategies rely on a rigorous synthesis of technical precision and aggressive creative experimentation to combat rising costs and market saturation.
- Prioritize long-term metrics like Day 30 or Day 90 retention over volatile short-term indicators to ensure optimization decisions support scalable growth.
- Establish a rigorous data health check to resolve misconfigured tracking and inconsistent reporting across mobile measurement partners, which are primary drivers of high cost-per-install figures.
- Implement a high-frequency creative refresh cadence to combat asset decay, utilizing a structured anatomy consisting of a compelling hook, gameplay, and a clear call to action.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers52 min
Frozen City vs Whiteout Survival, ad monetisation potential, UA, creatives & GD review (#56)
Century Games has experienced rapid financial expansion, with monthly revenues surging from $1 million in 2020 to $21 million by early 2023.
- Century Games is missing significant revenue potential in Frozen City by failing to implement robust ad monetization, leaving an estimated $2.6 million per month on the table based on current DAU levels.
- Whiteout Survival is outperforming Frozen City in early retention metrics, with Day 1 retention at 58% compared to Frozen City's 51% and Day 7 retention at 30% versus 22%.
- Frozen City has reached a scale of 4.2 million players, split evenly between iOS and Android, yet the developers have prioritized IAP revenue from whales over ad-based monetization.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers53 min
Deep & actionable SKAN 4.0 breakdown with Eran from Singular. What to expect from SKAN 4.0? (#55)
Apple’s SKAN 4.0 framework represents a pivotal shift in mobile attribution, moving beyond the restrictive 24-hour measurement windows of its predecessor to provide a more comprehensive view of long-term user behavior.
- SKAN 4.0 introduces three distinct conversion windows at 2, 7, and 35 days, enabling the measurement of long-term metrics like D35 return on ad spend.
- The framework expands source identifiers from 100 to 10,000, theoretically allowing for significantly deeper analysis of ad-set, creative, and placement performance.
- Access to high-fidelity data is gated by crowd anonymity tiers, meaning only high-volume advertisers will consistently receive the most granular reporting.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers49 min
two & a half gamers session #53 - Eversoul, a trending waifu game with full GD, UA, Admon review
Eversoul represents a significant entry in the idle RPG genre, blending traditional auto-battling mechanics with high-production JRPG-style exploration, puzzle-solving, and deep character-driven relationship systems.
- Eversoul generated $15 million in in-app purchase revenue since its January launch, demonstrating the financial viability of narrative-rich, character-focused idle RPGs.
- The game sustains strong performance with modest daily install volumes of approximately 6,000, proving that high player engagement and monetization can offset lower user acquisition scale.
- Eversoul’s success is driven by user-centric design choices, including an infinite starter gacha banner and quality-of-life subscription models that foster deep player investment.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024