Mobile reports and market data
Documents
Beyond Game Economy Design - Increasing Profit Through Intelligent Revenue Optimisation
Revenue optimization in mobile gaming extends beyond core gameplay design, requiring sophisticated, data-driven strategies to maximize player retention and monetization.
- Implementing automated loyalty programs can significantly boost key performance metrics, with one case study showing a 21% increase in day-one retention, a 24% increase in time spent in-app, and a 75% increase in average revenue per user (ARPU).
- For games heavily reliant on ad revenue, loyalty programs can act as a gamification layer that drives engagement, resulting in observed increases of 56% in day-one retention and 93% in total ad revenue.
- Effective revenue optimization requires moving beyond core gameplay loops to analyze thousands of player data signals, allowing developers to predict behavior and deliver personalized 'next best actions' for individual users.
Holistic LTV: A Unified View to Drive Growth & Efficiency
Maximizing user lifetime value (LTV) requires moving beyond fragmented, siloed data to a unified, holistic approach that integrates user acquisition, monetization, and product development.
- Transitioning from siloed metrics like ARPDAU and eCPM to a holistic LTV model is necessary to capture the total revenue generated by a user across their entire lifecycle.
- Fragmented data and reliance on waterfall-based ad reporting obscure true revenue performance, whereas programmatic bidding provides the granular, impression-level data required for accurate LTV calculations.
- Organizational silos between user acquisition, product, and monetization teams often lead to conflicting goals, such as increasing ad load to boost short-term revenue at the expense of long-term retention.
It’s 2020, Time to Change Your Ad Monetisation Strategies!
The mobile game advertising industry is undergoing a significant shift in 2020, moving away from traditional, inefficient waterfall monetization models toward real-time bidding (RTB) and unified auctions.
- The mobile game industry is shifting from inefficient, legacy waterfall monetization models to real-time bidding (RTB) and unified auctions to better capture the true market value of individual impressions.
- Unified auctions utilize first-price auction mechanics to provide developers with increased pricing transparency and more dynamic competition among ad networks, DSPs, and brands.
- Approximately 35% of surveyed companies have already tested in-app bidding, with an additional 35% planning to implement the technology within the next year.
Superstar Session: Build a UA Strategy Around Affinity With Contextual Ad Targeting
The mobile gaming industry is shifting toward contextual ad targeting as a primary strategy for user acquisition (UA), moving away from a reliance on traditional player data and behavior.
- Mobile user acquisition is shifting toward contextual targeting, which uses granular game metadata rather than personal identifiers to reach players based on their affinity for specific mechanics, art styles, and themes.
- This strategy relies on a framework of 52 distinct sub-genres, developed through expert analysis of major gaming markets including the US, Japan, and China.
- Machine learning models process this qualitative data to generate hundreds of specific data points per game, covering player personas, motivations, and core gameplay attributes.
Interactive Cinema or Mobile Game?
Recontact Digital Arts, an Istanbul-based studio founded by a film director and a producer, specializes in the development of interactive mobile cinema.
- Recontact Digital Arts is scaling the 'Playable Arts' genre by replacing linear, passive cutscenes with an 'endless story stream' of interactive, video-based gameplay.
- The studio pivoted its development strategy for Recontact: London to prioritize player agency, specifically removing intrusive interstitial ads and restrictive narrative structures that hindered previous titles.
- To maintain high retention, the game replaces traditional multiple-choice storytelling with five distinct video-based puzzle types, augmented reality features, and hidden object mechanics.
How a Well Designed UX can Improve Monetisation, UA and Retention and Keep Users Satisfied.
User experience (UX) design serves as a critical driver for monetization, user acquisition, and retention in mobile gaming.
- Approximately 30% of users abandon mobile games during the initial onboarding process, highlighting the critical need for optimized tutorial design.
- UX research and testing should be integrated early in the production cycle, ideally before coding begins, to validate design assumptions and identify friction points.
- To reduce tutorial drop-off, developers should use a 'chunking' strategy that delivers essential mechanics in small, action-oriented segments rather than overwhelming players with full system information.
When to Prototype and Why
Prototyping serves as a critical, data-driven bridge between conceptual ideation and full-scale production in the mobile gaming industry.
- Prototyping must be used to answer a single, specific question—such as mechanic fun or technical feasibility—to validate concepts through objective metrics rather than subjective opinion.
- Prototypes should be treated as disposable tools to be discarded once the core objective is met, preventing the accumulation of technical debt and team burnout.
- Development teams should utilize a disciplined, time-boxed approach that prioritizes core gameplay functionality over visual polish.
The End of Game Ownership – How the Subscription Model is Disrupting Mobile Games
The mobile gaming industry is currently undergoing a significant shift as subscription models emerge to challenge the dominance of the free-to-play (F2P) paradigm.
- The mobile gaming market is bifurcating into two distinct models: casino-style free-to-play (F2P) entertainment and subscription-based home entertainment.
- Subscription models prioritize user experience by eliminating intrusive advertisements and in-app purchases, shifting the monetization focus from individual game transactions to network-wide retention.
- Subscription services like GameClub, Xbox Game Pass, and Nintendo Switch Online drive higher content discovery, with data showing that subscribers engage with a broader variety of genres than under traditional purchase models.
Bridging the Gap: Connect With Your Gamers on Social Media
The primary objective of this presentation is to provide game developers and publishers with strategies for effectively engaging global gaming audiences through social media.
- Successful brand integration relies on creative, narrative-driven content rather than traditional, direct-sales advertising to foster organic community interest.
- A February 2019 survey of over 400,000 global gamers identified a strong preference for gaming memes and humorous social content over standard promotional material.
- High-performing campaigns for titles like PUBG Mobile, FIFA, and Kingdom Hearts 3 achieved millions of views by prioritizing creative assets—such as custom makeup or musical performances—over overt sales pitches.
Superstar Session: Influencer Marketing Sucks (and Some Best Practices)
The influencer marketing landscape for mobile applications is currently plagued by inefficiencies, lack of transparency, and poor scalability.
- Transitioning from flat-fee influencer payments to a performance-based, pay-per-install (CPI) model ensures advertisers only pay for verified user acquisition, guaranteeing positive ROI.
- Traditional influencer marketing suffers from low scalability and inefficiency due to manual outreach, reliance on unreliable vanity metrics, and the prevalence of bot activity.
- Integrating mobile measurement partner (MMP) tracking allows for the automation of influencer campaigns, removing the need for manual negotiation and constant oversight.
Minimal Design, Maximum Impact: Puzzle Game Design in Hypercasual Games
Successful mass-market puzzle game design requires a departure from traditional, rigid puzzle mechanics that rely on a single solution and punitive failure states.
- Mass-market puzzle games should abandon rigid, single-solution mechanics in favor of multiple paths to victory to reduce player frustration and churn.
- Designers must eliminate punitive failure states and ensure players always have at least one viable action to maintain engagement and prevent feelings of being trapped.
- Effective mobile puzzle design prioritizes player agency by allowing for strategic, multi-move planning rather than relying on rote memorization.
How we do Quality Assurance at King and How Agile Jenga Helps us With our Processes
The transition from traditional Quality Assurance to a model of Quality Assistance represents a fundamental shift in game development, moving away from isolated testing phases toward a culture of shared responsibility.
- King transitioned from traditional Quality Assurance to a 'Quality Assistance' model, shifting from isolated testing phases to a culture of shared responsibility across the entire development lifecycle.
- The 'Agile Jenga' methodology demonstrates that delaying testing until the end of a development cycle creates structural instability and necessitates costly rework.
- Quality specialists are integrated into all kickoff and planning meetings to define test cases and identify edge cases alongside developers before code implementation begins.
Writers
Games and companies
Games