Marketing reports and market data
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Global White Paper on Mobile Advertising & Marketing Game
Mobile game advertising in 2022 experienced a pronounced contraction, with total creatives falling nearly 30% year-over-year to 15.8 million while the advertiser base stayed flat at 45,100.
- Mobile game advertising volume contracted by nearly 30% in 2022 to 15.8 million creatives, driven by a shift toward quality-focused marketing and the impact of Apple’s IDFA changes.
- Video ads dominate the market, accounting for over 86% of all creatives, while casual and puzzle titles have displaced RPGs as the primary drivers of advertising spend.
- Cost-per-mille (CPM) is highest for strategy games at $21.58, and iOS advertising remains 15% more expensive than Android equivalents.
App Marketer Survey
The global app marketing landscape is currently defined by a paradox of rising performance expectations and diminishing data visibility.
- Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework has negatively impacted 64% of user acquisition campaigns, leading to increased costs for 72% of marketers and complicating decision-making for 73%.
- Nearly 60% of marketing professionals report facing more aggressive KPIs than in previous years, yet approximately half are currently struggling to meet these targets.
- To combat data scarcity, 52% of marketers plan to increase their 2023 advertising budgets while diversifying into influencer marketing and organic social media.
Rapport Annuel 2022 de l'ALD: Canada
The Association canadienne du logiciel de divertissement (ALD) presents an overview of its 2022 activities, emphasizing the organization’s mandate to champion the Canadian video-game sector through policy advocacy, industry research and public-relations initiatives.
- The Canadian video-game industry contributed $5.5 billion to the national GDP in 2021, marking the highest economic output recorded to date.
- The sector experienced significant growth between 2019 and 2021, with the number of active studios increasing from fewer than 700 to nearly 1,000.
- The industry currently supports 32,000 full-time direct employees and an additional 23,000 indirect jobs.
The State of Mobile Game and App Markets: Global Report on App Marketing for H1 2022
The mobile app and gaming landscape underwent a significant strategic pivot during the first half of 2022, characterized by a transition from high-volume advertising to a quality-centric model.
- App Store search accounted for 64.7% of all mobile app installs in H1 2022, cementing search visibility and ASO as the primary acquisition drivers.
- The mobile ecosystem experienced a contraction in mature regions, evidenced by a 6.2% year-over-year decline in advertisers and a 27% drop in total creatives.
- Tier-2/3 markets, specifically Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, bucked the global trend with a 37% year-over-year increase in advertiser counts.
2022 Global White Paper on Mobile Advertising & Marketing Game
The global mobile market in the first half of 2022 underwent a significant transition, characterized by a contraction in total advertising volume alongside a strategic pivot toward high-quality, video-centric content.
- The global mobile advertising market saw a 27% decline in creative volume during the first half of 2022, accompanied by rising costs that pushed the average CPM to $19.31.
- Video content now dominates the advertising landscape, accounting for over 86% of all creatives as developers shift toward high-quality, drama-based storytelling to lower entry barriers.
- While the total number of advertisers decreased, emerging markets in the Middle East, South America, and Southeast Asia showed robust growth, contrasting with the high-cost user acquisition environments of the United States and South Korea.
For the Game
The global gaming industry is undergoing a transformative shift into a primary mass medium, projected to reach 3.5 billion players and $225 billion in revenue by 2025.
- The global gaming industry is projected to reach 3.5 billion players and $225 billion in revenue by 2025.
- Gamers are high-value 'super-consumers' who engage with television and internet platforms for nearly 60 hours per week.
- Over one-third of the global player base uses gaming primarily as a social platform, necessitating a shift toward community-focused engagement strategies.
Charm Your Communities
Charming a gaming community involves shifting from a traditional top-down marketing funnel to a community-first approach that prioritizes authentic, human-centric connections.
- Charming a community requires moving beyond audience-building to create intentional, warm, and playful experiences that foster mutual connection rather than just passive consumption.
- Community members progress through four distinct stages—new, regular, loyal, and advocate—and developers must provide consistent, positive interactions to move them toward becoming advocates who contribute to the community's health.
- Small, daily, and authentic interactions are more effective at building community than grand, expensive gestures or metric-focused marketing campaigns.
Panel: The Truth About Ads: Is Disruption, a Requirement or an Opportunity for Game Makers?
The mobile gaming industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation as privacy regulations, most notably iOS 14, dismantle traditional identity-based targeting.
- The mobile gaming industry is shifting from deterministic, identity-based targeting to probabilistic, contextual modeling due to privacy regulations like iOS 14.
- To maintain revenue, developers are prioritizing non-intrusive, brand-focused advertising and verifiable auction processes over traditional tracking methods.
- User acquisition strategies are diversifying beyond standard mobile ads to include influencer marketing, cross-platform campaigns, and traditional media channels.
WorldBox release date hack
Steam store pages allow developers to bypass standard character limitations in the release date field, providing a strategic opportunity to increase game visibility.
- Developers can bypass standard Steam release date field character limits to inject custom marketing copy into store listings.
- This technique forces custom text to appear in the Steam wishlist widget and the hover tooltip, areas that typically do not display a game's short description.
- The hack serves as a functional workaround to provide immediate context to potential players who interact with a game listing before clicking through to the store page.
UA Creatives Testing | How Traplight Games Optimizes Mobile Ads for Battle Legion
Mobile user acquisition strategies for the title Battle Legion rely on a modular production pipeline that systematically tests creative variables to maximize install-per-mille.
- Creative assets must be tailored to specific placement types: shorter ads perform best in Facebook Feeds, while longer-form content yields higher conversion rates in the Audience Network.
- Performance optimization requires aligning video duration with algorithmic constraints, such as the 15-second unskippable limit for in-stream video placements.
- Traplight Games utilized a modular production pipeline to test 64 distinct ad variations over a three-month period to maximize install-per-mille (IPM).
How to Brand a New Game Studio with Joe Nickolls, President of Timbre Games
Establishing a new game studio in the competitive Vancouver market requires a strategic shift toward human-centric employer branding.
- Prioritizing a values-driven, human-centric culture over traditional corporate prestige allows new studios to differentiate themselves and attract high-quality talent in competitive markets like Vancouver.
- Timbre Games achieved a workforce composition that is 67% women by removing exclusionary, jargon-heavy language from recruitment processes and prioritizing transparent communication.
- Operational success is driven by the philosophy that internal culture directly dictates creative output, ensuring team cohesion translates into high-quality player-facing game design.
Superstar Session: Widget as a Performance Tool
Twitch has emerged as a premier platform for performance-oriented influencer marketing, particularly for gaming brands seeking deep audience engagement.
- Widget-integrated Twitch campaigns achieve install rates of approximately 15 percent, significantly outperforming standard industry benchmarks.
- Dynamic, customizable widgets integrated via OBS transform passive viewers into active participants by displaying real-time data like game progress or download counts triggered by user actions.
- Twitch facilitates higher trust and conversion rates than static platforms like YouTube by allowing brands to integrate into native, unscripted streamer-community conversations.