Marketing

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence chatbots is fundamentally altering consumer behavior, signaling a shift away from the long-standing dominance of traditional search engines. By early 2025, OpenAI’s ChatGPT reached 500 million global monthly active users, achieving this milestone faster than any app in the last decade. This growth is accompanied by a significant increase in engagement; in April 2025, ChatGPT saw a 60% rise in session frequency and a 270% jump in web visits, while traditional search engines experienced a 3% decline in user engagement metrics.

The demographic profile of AI users is evolving from technical early adopters to mainstream consumers. This transition is reflected in the shifting nature of user prompts. While software development queries accounted for 44% of prompts in early 2024, they fell to 29% by 2025. Conversely, categories such as economics, finance, and taxes saw a substantial increase, rising 9 percentage points year-over-year. This suggests that consumers are increasingly relying on AI for complex personal tasks, including investment planning and tax preparation.

Data indicates that chatbots are becoming powerful engines for web traffic and commerce. The top referral destinations from ChatGPT include YouTube, Wikipedia, and the National Library of Medicine, with Amazon ranking fourth. This positioning highlights the growing role of AI in driving purchase intent and informational discovery. While early adopters of AI have already reduced their time spent on Google apps by approximately 6%, more recent converts have yet to show a material change in search habits, suggesting that the erosion of traditional search dominance may accelerate as user habits solidify over time.

The new five‑year strategy and action plan sets out a comprehensive roadmap for the UK video‑games and interactive‑entertainment sector, positioning it as the world’s leading hub for new intellectual property and innovation by 2030. Its core thesis is that sustained growth, enhanced global perception, and a resilient, diverse talent pipeline will secure the industry’s long‑term economic and cultural impact. The plan outlines four strategic priorities—transforming public and media perceptions, building a pro‑games policy agenda, cultivating a highly skilled and inclusive workforce, and strengthening businesses through targeted support.

Key initiatives include three flagship campaigns: energising industry to turn innovative stories into globally successful IPs, empowering talent by nurturing creators and entrepreneurs, and elevating games to showcase British‑made titles as forces for good. The 2024‑25 action schedule launches a coordinated PR strategy, high‑impact partnerships with cultural and digital brands, and an evidence‑led lobbying effort aimed at more competitive tax reliefs, increased investment, and the introduction of a Digital Creativity GCSE. A new research and evidence base will underpin policy advocacy, while a sector‑wide skills network and the refreshed #RaiseTheGame programme will drive diversity, equity, and inclusion across the talent pipeline.

The plan also commits to environmental responsibility through participation in the Playing for the Planet Alliance and internal sustainability measures. Supporting stronger businesses will involve a refreshed membership strategy, expansion of the Ukie Worldwide platform for trade and investment, and the continuation of the Video Games Growth Programme. By inviting industry stakeholders to engage through surveys, working groups, mentorship, and board participation, the strategy seeks broad collaboration to deliver its ambitious objectives across the UK’s mobile, console, core and casual game segments throughout the 2024‑2030 horizon.

The Japanese mobile gaming market is characterized by a conservative but highly specialized marketing landscape, where local companies maintain a dominant revenue position. Analysis of data from 2023 reveals that Japan’s share of advertisers using new creatives (62.23%) and the overall volume of new creatives (29.77%) sit significantly below global averages. Despite this lower turnover, the market remains lucrative, with Japanese firms controlling nine of the top ten spots for revenue on the App Store. Chinese developers represent the most significant foreign presence, accounting for 30% of the top 100 grossing titles.

Marketing strategies in the region rely heavily on cultural integration and long-term player retention. Key findings highlight the importance of pre-registration campaigns, which utilize tiered rewards ranging from in-game currency to physical prizes like consoles. Anniversary and half-anniversary celebrations are critical milestones used to reactivate lapsed users and boost revenue through exclusive content. Furthermore, cross-industry collaborations with popular anime, film, and music IPs serve as a primary driver for market expansion and community engagement.

Creative trends are distinctively localized, featuring "over-exposure" visual filters, text-heavy layouts, and manga-style storyboards. Video ads are the dominant format, making up nearly 70% of mobile game creatives. Recent successful campaigns, such as those for Legend of Mushroom and Saint Seiya: Legend of Justice, demonstrate the effectiveness of using local celebrity endorsements, nostalgic IP elements, and AI-generated imagery to target specific demographics like the "Otaku" segment.

The data, compiled by SocialPeta, draws from a global database of 1.4 billion ad creatives across 70 countries and 70 ad channels, including Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. While casual and puzzle games lead in advertiser volume, RPGs remain the highest-grossing genre, accounting for 32% of the top 100 revenue-generating games on Google Play.

The mobile app industry demonstrated significant resilience throughout 2023, characterized by a global advertising spend of $362 billion and a late-year surge in installations. While the landscape faced challenges such as rising acquisition costs and evolving privacy regulations, the fintech and e-commerce sectors emerged as primary growth engines. Fintech experienced a 42% increase in installs and a 118% surge in in-app revenue, while e-commerce saw a 43% year-over-year rise in installs alongside a 34% increase in revenue. These sectors successfully optimized their acquisition strategies, with banking eCPIs falling from $2.33 to $1.37, allowing marketers to achieve rapid returns on investment within the first week of user acquisition.

The gaming sector navigated a more complex trajectory, ending the year with a 2% annual decline in installs despite a notable recovery in the fourth quarter. This rebound was driven by a 7% year-over-year growth in installs and the emergence of the hybrid casual genre. Although overall gaming sessions dipped, specific subverticals like racing and simulation saw dramatic install spikes of 61% and 53%, respectively. Global gaming stickiness remained stable at 20%, and high-engagement genres like RPG and adventure continued to command strong lifetime value, even as broader retention rates across the mobile ecosystem faced downward pressure.

Future industry success depends on the strategic integration of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to enhance personalization and automate complex workflows. To achieve sustained growth in 2024 and beyond, developers must diversify their media mixes by expanding into emerging channels like Connected TV and adopting holistic measurement frameworks. By combining incrementality testing with media mix modeling, stakeholders can better navigate the shift toward privacy-centric marketing while capitalizing on the high-potential returns offered by the global mobile marketplace.

The 2024 Inside Gaming analysis reveals that video games have evolved into a primary medium for identity formation and self-expression, surpassing traditional motivations like competition or time-killing. Based on a global survey of 5,000 entertainment and gaming consumers alongside proprietary first-party data, the findings indicate that 46% of players now prioritize creation and imagination as their primary reason for gaming, marking a 10% year-over-year increase. This shift is driving significant engagement, as players who view gaming as a platform for authenticity are 30% more likely to increase their playtime compared to previous years.

The data highlights a profound psychological disconnect between players' digital and physical lives, with 80% of respondents stating their gaming personality differs from their real-life persona. Furthermore, 64% of gamers find it easier to be themselves with a controller in hand than in person. This desire for authenticity is reflected in gameplay preferences, where 76% of players utilize character personalization and 48% focus on unique gamertags to express themselves. Games that facilitate this expression through in-game customization, vast open worlds, and constant updates see 60% higher engagement than industry norms, a trend exemplified by titles such as Roblox, Fortnite, and The Sims.

There is a significant commercial opportunity for brands to bridge the gap between virtual and physical identities. Nearly half of all players express a desire for their real-life presence to mirror their gaming presence, particularly regarding physical appearance and skill sets. This sentiment is especially strong among marginalized and younger demographics, including women, non-binary individuals, and multicultural players. Consequently, 72% of consumers report they would view brands more favorably if those companies helped them translate their gaming-inspired self-expression into the real world through products, skills, or lifestyle alignments.

The analysis focuses on contemporary marketing dynamics within the global mobile gaming sector, emphasizing how creative diversification and platform targeting shape user acquisition performance. In the third quarter of 2023, a leading animal‑themed strategy‑lite game launched by a major publisher introduced an extensive creative slate, deploying 6,500 distinct ad assets across major ad networks. Notably, 85 % of these assets were brand‑new, reflecting a deliberate strategy to refresh visual and messaging elements at scale. This high proportion of novel creatives aligns with broader industry observations that frequent creative turnover mitigates ad fatigue and sustains click‑through rates in highly competitive markets.

The data underscores the importance of deduplication processes in large‑scale campaigns, ensuring that each impression reaches a unique audience segment while preserving measurement integrity. By tracking deduplicated impressions, the campaign achieved a more accurate assessment of reach and cost efficiency, revealing that fresh creative assets can improve cost‑per‑install (CPI) benchmarks by up to 12 % compared with static creative pools. These findings suggest that investment in creative production pipelines and rapid iteration cycles yields measurable returns, especially for mid‑core titles competing for attention in saturated regions such as North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia.

Overall, the evidence points to a shifting paradigm where creative volume and novelty become critical levers for growth in the mobile gaming ecosystem. Publishers that integrate systematic creative testing, maintain high rates of new asset introduction, and employ rigorous deduplication are better positioned to optimize acquisition spend, extend campaign longevity, and capture incremental market share across diverse geographic territories during the 2023 fiscal period.

Global mobile game marketing reached a pivotal turning point in the second quarter of 2023, characterized by a record-breaking surge in creative volume. Over 9.3 million new creatives entered the market, representing nearly three-quarters of all active advertisements. While casual games maintained the largest share of advertisers at over 30%, RPG and Casino genres experienced the most aggressive growth in creative output. Geographically, Southeast Asia emerged as a primary hub for advertising density, leading the world in monthly creatives per advertiser, while the Middle East solidified its status as a high-growth market where strategy games command significant revenue shares.

The industry is increasingly adopting "Casual + X" hybrid models and integrating AI-generated content, ASMR, and short-video memes to mitigate rising user acquisition costs. Financial data reveals a stark contrast in installation costs between platforms, with iOS casual game installs costing $2.23 compared to $0.63 on Android, yet both platforms achieved a comparable seven-day return on ad spend of approximately 7.7%. This parity suggests that despite higher upfront costs, the quality of users on premium platforms remains consistent with broader market performance.

Market leaders like Honkai: Star Rail and MONOPOLY GO! demonstrated the efficacy of high-frequency creative refreshes, with new assets comprising over 60% of their total advertising portfolios. These titles leveraged distinct psychological hooks, ranging from influencer-driven user-generated content to social-casual mechanics, to achieve rapid global penetration. Notably, these aggressive marketing strategies allowed Honkai: Star Rail to surpass Genshin Impact in overseas revenue during the quarter, signaling a shift toward more dynamic, content-heavy advertising cycles across the global mobile landscape.

The mobile gaming landscape experienced a notable shift in monetization and user acquisition patterns between 2022 and the first half of 2023. In-app purchase (IAP) activity demonstrated robust growth across both major mobile operating systems, with Android and Apple platforms recording increases of 23% and 24%, respectively. This upward trend in monetization suggests a resilient consumer base despite broader economic fluctuations within the mobile app ecosystem.

Geographic distribution of installs remained relatively stable on Android, with India, Brazil, and the United States maintaining their positions as the top three markets. Conversely, the iOS landscape underwent more significant regional changes, as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany gained prominence, displacing China and Saudi Arabia from the top five rankings. These shifts highlight the evolving importance of Western markets for iOS-based mobile game developers.

Ad network performance also saw a realignment in competitive dominance. On Android, Google Ads ascended to the top position for total installs in the first half of 2023, while Meta entered the top five. On iOS, AppLovin reclaimed the leading position, and Meta secured a top-five spot, reflecting a dynamic advertising environment where major platforms continue to vie for market share.

This analysis relies on anonymized data aggregated by Tenjin from January 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023. The findings are restricted to ad networks and countries that achieved a minimum threshold of 25 million installs, ensuring that the reported trends represent significant market activity. By tracking these metrics, the data provides a clear view of the shifting priorities and regional focus areas for mobile publishers navigating the transition toward hybrid monetization models.

India’s mobile‑gaming ecosystem is experiencing rapid expansion, with a projected market value of $8.6 billion by 2027 and more than 600 million active users. Growth is fueled by affordable smartphones, low data costs, and a pandemic‑accelerated surge in casual, hyper‑casual, and real‑money titles. Install rates spiked up to 90 % during lockdowns, while in‑app purchase revenue is expected to reach $284 billion by 2026. To sustain this momentum, brands must deploy comprehensive customer‑engagement platforms that provide real‑time analytics, segmentation, and personalized push campaigns to enhance retention and monetization.

Push notifications and in‑app messaging prove critical for user engagement. Data shows a 3.34 % click‑through rate and up to 91 % delivery success for push alerts, while in‑app campaigns achieve 15–44 % conversion rates and a 38 % average on one million impressions. Segmentation techniques such as RFM, affinity profiling, and predictive AI models (e.g., Sherpa) enable targeted, omnichannel flows that reduce churn and lower acquisition costs—new customers cost five times more than retaining existing ones. App Store Optimization tools like AppTweak further amplify visibility; for instance, RummyCircle’s keyword strategy increased visibility by 14.2 % and drove a 200,000‑download spike after A/B testing.

Despite the market’s growth, brands face declining installs, stickiness, and revenue. The solution lies in data‑driven engagement: hyper‑personalized messaging powered by AI unlocks deeper customer insights, improves retention, and provides a competitive advantage. Platforms such as MoEngage, already trusted by Fortune 500 and internet‑first brands worldwide, offer the scalability required for publishers to thrive in India’s dynamic mobile‑gaming landscape.

DEVELOPER'S Table of contents Damian Jaskowski is a Chinese gaming market expert working as Expert PR Manager for East Asia at 1l bit studios and Chinese Market Coordinator at the Indie Games Poland Foundation. 3 PART II – A STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO PART III – REACHING OUT TO YOUR FANBASE 20 4 MARKET 12 3.1 Chines...

The global mobile landscape in 2022 was defined by a 17.5% year-on-year increase in quarterly advertisers despite a 16% decline in total creative volume. This shift indicates a transition toward more dynamic, high-frequency marketing strategies, with over 90% of advertisers launching new creatives each quarter. While North America maintained the largest advertiser base, markets in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan exhibited the highest creative output per advertiser. Android remained the dominant platform for volume, often doubling the creative output of iOS, though iOS advertisers grew to represent 40% of the market by year-end.

The gaming sector experienced a notable decoupling of engagement and monetization. Genres such as strategy, simulation, and casual games saw year-over-year download growth ranging from 8% to 10%, yet simultaneously faced revenue declines between 9% and 16%. To combat rising user acquisition costs and falling revenues, developers increasingly adopted "Casual + X" strategies. This trend involved integrating hyper-casual mini-games—such as "save the dog" puzzles or line-drawing mechanics—into the marketing funnels of complex RPG and strategy titles to lower costs and broaden appeal. Hybrid-casual titles also emerged as a significant force, utilizing Roguelike mechanics and high-volume video ads to bridge the gap between traditional casual play and deeper monetization.

In the non-game sector, advertising activity peaked in the fourth quarter, driven largely by utility tools, shopping, and educational applications. Video content remained the primary medium, accounting for over 70% of creatives across most global regions. Major players like TikTok and Duolingo maintained market leadership through exceptionally high creative refresh rates, often exceeding 95% new content. Regionally, Southeast Asia and Turkey showed a heavy reliance on Android and localized "big hit" formulas, while the United States and Japan remained the primary drivers of global revenue.

Looking forward, the industry is shifting toward story-centric strategies and user-generated content to navigate a privacy-first environment. With the implementation of SKAdNetwork 4.0 and the impending Android Privacy Sandbox, marketers are moving away from granular user-level targeting in favor of Media Mix Modeling. The prevailing conclusion is that long-term lifetime value and diversified monetization models are now essential to offset rising platform costs and tightening media budgets.

This analysis examines the efficacy of intrinsic in-game advertising as a high-engagement medium compared to traditional digital channels. Partnering with Lumen Research, the study utilizes eye-tracking technology and machine learning to analyze data from 25 specific brand campaigns and over 90 broader industry studies. The research focuses on global cross-platform environments, including mobile, PC, and console, comparing in-game performance against 42 standard digital advertising formats such as social media feeds and video platforms.

The findings indicate that gaming environments significantly outperform traditional digital media in viewability and attention. In-game ads achieved a 98% viewability rate, compared to a 78% average for other digital formats. Crucially, 85% of in-game impressions were actually viewed by players, surpassing the digital norm of 65%. In terms of duration, 80% of the studied in-game ads exceeded the critical two-second viewing threshold required for memory encoding, averaging 3.1 seconds of attention. This translates to 2,795 attentive seconds per 1,000 impressions, which is 22% higher than the average across all other digital formats and outperforms 76% of individual digital advertising categories, including most social media display and video.

The data concludes that high attention levels in gaming lead to measurable brand impact. Participants exposed to in-game ads showed a 9% point uplift in prompted brand awareness and a 7% point increase in purchase intent compared to control groups. For challenger brands, the impact was even more pronounced, with top campaigns seeing a 14% uplift in purchase intent. These results suggest that the immersive, "lean-forward" nature of gaming prevents the ad avoidance common in "distracted" media like TV or social scrolling, positioning in-game advertising as a superior tool for driving both brand recall and lower-funnel conversions.