Marketing reports and market data
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Documents
Report16 pages
Rewarded UA Handbook: 2026
Rewarded user acquisition (UA) has evolved into a foundational component of the mobile marketing mix, serving as a critical solution to the industry’s ongoing challenges of rising acquisition costs and high user churn.
- Rewarded UA is now a core marketing channel, with 61% of surveyed studios planning to increase their budget in 2026 and 65% of studios allocating between 11% and 50% of their total UA spend to the channel.
- Extending reward structures beyond traditional short-term windows is critical for retention; for example, Candivore increased their Match Masters reward structure from 50 to 90 days, resulting in a 50% increase in D60 retention and a 70% uplift in D90 ROAS.
- Campaigns that layer multiple event types outperform single-event campaigns, with IAP/hybrid games utilizing an average of 3.25 distinct event types per campaign to drive long-term engagement.
AlmediaJun 2026
Mobile Dev Memo38 min
S07, E20: Shopify as a marketing operating system (with Venkat Prabhu)
Shopify is fundamentally transforming from a commerce platform into a comprehensive marketing operating system designed to simplify advertising for merchants.
- Shopify is evolving into a comprehensive marketing operating system by launching 'Campaign Autopilot,' a tool that uses data from $1.7 trillion in processed GMV to automate campaign settings and budget recommendations for merchants.
- Shopify is expanding its 'Shop Campaigns' advertising program to new surfaces, including ChatGPT, Pinterest, and the open web via Microsoft Monetize, to help merchants scale beyond their existing channels.
- The platform leverages its position as the transaction layer to solve cross-channel attribution and data blind spots, allowing merchants to manage attribution logic directly within the Shopify admin.
Mobile Dev MemoJun 2026
Two & a Half Gamers25 min
🧠 What You Send Is What You Get: Signal Engineering and the Future of Attribution with Core Plan
Airbridge has introduced Core Plan, a self-serve, pay-as-you-go mobile measurement partner (MMP) solution designed to address the needs of early-stage app founders.
- Airbridge launched Core Plan, a self-serve MMP solution for startups with under $10 million in ARR, offering 15,000 free attributed installs in the first year followed by a pay-as-you-go rate of 5 cents per install.
- The platform utilizes an AI-native onboarding process to reduce typical two-month SDK and taxonomy setup timelines to two or three hours.
- Core Plan provides 65% of enterprise-grade features, including cohort analysis, raw data export, and deep linking, while excluding complex agency management and multi-touch attribution tools.
Two & a Half GamersJun 2026
PocketGamer.biz27 min
The Rewarded Ads Strategy: Why Original Games Dedicates 30% of UA Budgets to This Channel
The rewarded advertising landscape in mobile gaming has evolved from a simple tool for driving short-term installs into a sophisticated, data-driven ecosystem essential for user acquisition and game discovery.
- Rewarded ads have evolved from simple install-driven models into a sophisticated, data-led channel that can deliver 4 to 5 times higher ARPDAU compared to traditional UA channels like Apple and Unity.
- Original Games allocates 30% of its monthly user acquisition budget to rewarded ads, leveraging cohort-based modeling to predict long-term player value and profitability.
- The rewarded ecosystem has shifted from a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to a strategy requiring granular user segmentation, balancing 'rewards hunters' who seek quick payouts with 'casual players' who provide long-term retention.
PocketGamer.bizJun 2026
How To Market A Game22 min
Nothing has changed: June Steam Next Fest 2026
The June 2026 Steam Next Fest analysis emphasizes that the event’s structure and the Steam algorithm remain largely static, with minimal changes observed between the February and June iterations.
- Steam Next Fest performance is largely predetermined by pre-festival wishlist counts, with the vast majority of games following predictable statistical trends rather than experiencing viral spikes.
- The number of games participating in Steam Next Fest has grown significantly, rising from 2,650 in October 2025 to 3,458 in February 2026, and reaching 4,358 in June 2026.
- There are no effective 'gimmicks' or last-minute marketing tactics to improve performance during the event; developers should only push updates if the game is technically broken or crashing.
How To Market A GameJun 2026
Two & a Half Gamers39 min
🧠 Playrix just went All-In on AI Creatives: 100+ AI Ads Reviewed
Playrix has fundamentally transformed its marketing operations by adopting an all-in strategy for AI-generated creative assets across flagship titles such as Township, Gardenscapes, and Homescapes.
- Playrix has transitioned from experimental AI testing to a full-scale production model for flagship titles like Township, Gardenscapes, and Homescapes.
- The integration of AI tools has reduced creative production timelines from weeks to a single day, enabling rapid localization and scaling of assets.
- Playrix uses AI to aggressively iterate on proven narrative tropes, such as slapstick humor and character-driven drama, while testing new aesthetics like anime-inspired visuals.
Two & a Half GamersJun 2026
Report33 pages
Insights into the Global AI Animation Market in 2026
The global animation and micro-drama industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation as production pipelines shift toward AI-native workflows.
- AI-native production pipelines are enabling a fivefold increase in development speed and significant cost reductions, shifting the animation industry toward standardized, high-volume models.
- The micro-drama sector saw a 21.93 percent year-over-year increase in monthly advertisers by Q1 2026, with AI-generated ad creatives surging by nearly 200 percent in March 2026 alone.
- Major platforms including ShortMax, NetShort, and ReelShort are utilizing AI-driven visual effects to scale male-oriented fantasy and reversal-of-fortune narratives in Western markets.
SocialPetaJun 2026
Jason Schreier17 min
The Real Reason E3 Died
The decline of E3 is primarily attributed to the fundamental shift in the video game industry from physical retail to digital distribution.
- E3 was fundamentally a B2B trade show designed for publishers to secure retail shelf space at major chains like Walmart, Target, and GameStop, rather than a consumer-facing event.
- The shift from physical to digital game distribution, which saw digital sales reach 80% to 90% of total volume for major publishers like Xbox by 2021, rendered the traditional retail-focused trade show obsolete.
- The decline of E3 began in the late 2010s as major publishers like PlayStation and Xbox withdrew from the LA Convention Center to host their own independent events or pre-recorded showcases.
Jason SchreierJun 2026
Two & a Half Gamers34 min
🎮 The 3 Rewarded UA Personas: Reward Hunter, Casual, Gambler. How TyrAds Segments for Profit
Rewarded user acquisition has evolved into a sophisticated, data-driven sector that currently commands approximately 30% of total advertising budgets.
- Rewarded user acquisition now accounts for approximately 30% of total advertising budgets in the gaming industry.
- Modern platforms are shifting from manual optimization to fully automated, ROAS-based models that prioritize long-term LTV curves between day-7 and day-30.
- AI-driven user labeling categorizes traffic into three distinct personas—reward hunters, casual social users, and gamblers—to prevent ROI erosion from over-reliance on high-cost gambler segments.
Two & a Half GamersJun 2026
Deconstructor of Fun15 min
Match Masters' Secret Growth Engine? Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has evolved from a peripheral experimental tactic into a core, permanent growth pillar for mobile gaming studios.
- Influencer marketing acts as a core growth engine that can drive up to 30% growth in organic installs by leveraging creator-led trust to attract higher-quality, more engaged users.
- Short-term attribution models significantly undervalue creator partnerships, as influencer-driven installs can continue to accrue for over a year, with some campaigns seeing a 50% increase in attributed installs by day 365.
- Influencer activity creates a positive feedback loop where install spikes improve app store rankings, which subsequently fuels further organic discovery and stabilizes daily active users.
Deconstructor of FunJun 2026
Mobile Dev Memo48 min
Podcast: Can AI Save Journalism? (with Peter Stuart)
The integration of artificial intelligence into modern journalism represents a strategic shift from experimental novelty to a practical tool for operational efficiency.
- AI tools are increasingly used to automate the 'decomposition' of the publishing process, specifically by handling menial tasks like CMS data entry, SEO tagging, and alt-text generation to allow journalists to focus on high-value reporting.
- Large media organizations are slower to adopt AI than smaller publishers due to internal inertia and the complexity of managing workflows for hundreds or thousands of journalists, whereas smaller, agile entities are more aggressively integrating these tools.
- The use of LLMs for research and fact-checking can improve journalistic rigor by allowing writers to process complex information, such as earnings reports or technical papers, more efficiently and to perform 'adversarial' reviews to identify potential biases or criticisms.
Mobile Dev MemoJun 2026
Deconstructor of Fun60 min
TWIG #386: CoD MW4 Revealed, Sony's State of Play, Bungie's End and 007 First Light
The global gaming industry is currently navigating a period of significant structural transition, marked by a pivot toward current-generation hardware and a reevaluation of long-term profitability strategies.
- The Asia-MENA gaming market is projected to reach a $103 billion valuation by 2030, though Western publishers struggle to compete against local developers who currently command a 90 to 95 percent revenue share in those regions.
- Major publishers are shifting away from legacy console support to prioritize technical performance and modular mechanics, as seen in the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, even at the cost of immediate unit volume.
- Sony is maintaining profitability despite declining first-party unit sales by successfully leveraging third-party revenue and console exclusivity strategies.
Deconstructor of FunJun 2026