Mobile reports and market data
Documents
From missile defense to user acquisition – How advanced AI models predict performance
Predictive intelligence technology, specifically machine learning, serves as a transformative tool for optimizing user acquisition (UA) and mitigating wasted advertising spend.
- Integrating predictive AI into user acquisition can nearly double the success rate of campaign management decisions compared to manual oversight alone.
- Predictive models identify an 'optimum CPI' threshold where additional advertising spend transitions from boosting ROI to yielding diminishing returns.
- Machine learning algorithms analyze granular metrics, such as day-by-day ROI accumulation and the correlation between CPI and user value, to forecast future performance with high precision.
Getting Players to Care: Using Narrative to Drive Retention
Narrative-driven design serves as a primary engine for player retention in mobile simulation games, particularly when plot progression is deeply integrated into the core gameplay loop.
- Integrating narrative progression into core gameplay loops, specifically through mandatory story gates and character arcs, achieves an 87 percent tutorial completion rate.
- Consistent weekly narrative updates are critical for retention, sustaining a 71 percent one-day retention rate and a 33 percent monthly retention rate.
- Narrative content functions as a monetization driver, with 63 percent of users engaging with premium quest chains.
Papaya Mobile building its user acquisition empire
Papaya Mobile operates as a long-standing performance marketing specialist focused on mobile user acquisition, evolving over a decade from a game developer into a cross-promotional platform, an ad network, and finally a social media-focused agency.
- Papaya Mobile acts as a major reseller for global advertising platforms including Facebook, Google, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat to facilitate cross-border user acquisition.
- The company has transitioned from a game developer into a specialized agency that bridges Chinese mobile applications with international markets, with a current strategic focus on the European games sector.
- Marketing strategy has shifted from prioritizing simple install volume to focusing on post-install events and long-term user value (LTV) to drive monetization efficiency.
Influencer marketing with Zorka.Mobi
Influencer marketing serves as a critical driver for mobile game user acquisition, bridging the gap between game developers and relevant audiences through native video content.
- Influencer marketing drives mobile game user acquisition by utilizing native video content to reach specific demographics across platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
- Campaign effectiveness is optimized through a data-driven methodology that uses proprietary tools to analyze historical influencer performance and predict outcomes.
- Agencies typically initiate campaigns with a test phase involving three to ten influencers to gather data for refining larger-scale, subsequent launches.
Saturn Animation on using augmented reality for storytelling
Saturn Animation has transitioned from producing 2D interactive storybooks for children to developing immersive 3D augmented reality (AR) storytelling experiences.
- Saturn Animation has pivoted from 2D interactive storybooks to 3D augmented reality (AR) to increase user engagement by encouraging physical navigation of digital environments.
- The studio standardized its development pipeline on ARKit and ARCore to ensure performance stability, prioritizing high-fidelity experiences over broad device compatibility.
- Spatial design in AR requires high-quality 3D assets that maintain visual consistency from all viewing angles, necessitating a departure from traditional flat-screen interface design.
MoPub on how advanced bidding services can 'revolutionise' mobile advertising
MoPub’s primary objective in the mobile advertising sector is to transition the industry toward advanced bidding, a technology designed to optimize monetization for app developers.
- MoPub is transitioning mobile advertising from fragmented ad networks to advanced bidding, a model that creates a unified, real-time competitive environment to increase publisher yield.
- Advanced bidding allows programmatic demand to compete directly against traditional ad networks, capturing larger brand advertising budgets while improving transparency.
- Since 2010, the mobile market has shifted from premium paid-to-download apps to a free-to-play model where advertising is a core revenue stream rather than an intrusive element.
Making Kitty Powers' Matchmaker - Adventures of a Videogame Drag Queen
The development of the mobile dating simulator Kitty Powers' Matchmaker serves as a case study for independent game design, focusing on the integration of humor, inclusivity, and procedural generation.
- Kitty Powers' Matchmaker utilized a complex procedural generation system to create characters defined by five personality categories, including specific traits like guilty pleasures and bad habits to ensure depth.
- The game's script was designed as a modular, novel-length text database, enabling thousands of unique dialogue combinations and sarcastic interactions between the host and players.
- Development of the project spanned approximately two years and relied on a remote, collaborative workflow that managed vast text assets through shared spreadsheets.
Landing Page Review: Accelebot (Indie Game Marketing)
This analysis evaluates the landing page and promotional trailer for Accelebot, a 2D mobile platformer for iOS.
- The trailer fails to demonstrate the game's core unique selling point, which is the specific control scheme involving device tilting and tapping to jump.
- Marketing copy should avoid sarcastic or self-deprecating humor, as it risks undermining the professional credibility of the project.
- Email lists for mobile games often see conversion rates below 20%, making the quality of initial community outreach more important than raw subscriber volume.
Designing Location-Based Augmented Reality Games for Urban Tourism: A Conceptual Framework
This study proposes a conceptual framework for designing location-based augmented reality games (LBARGs) specifically to enhance urban tourism experiences.
- The study proposes a six-trait engagement framework (emotional, ludic, narrative, spatial, social, and mixed reality) for location-based augmented reality games in urban tourism, built on O'Brien and Toms' (2008) engagement model.
- The framework was developed by testing Ingress, a commercial game not designed for tourism, in a qualitative exploratory study with 11 participants aged 12 to 36 of varied nationalities, playing on Android devices in Bournemouth city centre and surrounding parks in summer 2014.
- Players showed strong excitement during discovery and challenge completion, and spatial exploration heightened their awareness of unfamiliar locations.
The Art of Reanimating Plants vs. Zombies 2
This presentation outlines the artistic development process for Plants vs. Zombies 2, focusing on the challenges of creating a sequel to a highly acclaimed, genre-defining title.
- Successful sequels must prioritize protecting the core identity and mechanics of the original title rather than attempting to replace them.
- The development team transitioned from hand-drawn art to a vector-based aesthetic using Flash to improve animation efficiency and visual readability on smaller mobile screens.
- The narrative shift to a time-travel theme allowed for the introduction of new environments and mechanics while maintaining the franchise's established visual language.
FY2018 2Q Result Presentation
GREE, Inc. reported results for the second quarter of fiscal 2018, presented on February 2, 2018, with management arguing that a temporary moderation in mobile games has been managed while the company expands into new areas.
- GREE reported FY2018 Q2 net sales of ¥19.5 billion and operating income of ¥2.3 billion, both exceeding internal targets.
- The company is pivoting toward console gaming, with 'The Fishing Star' confirmed for Nintendo Switch and a global release currently in development.
- While year-on-year growth was positive, quarterly sales moderated by approximately 10 percentage points due to reduced advertising spend and lower commission fees.
How Facebook supports developers in getting their games discovered
Facebook serves as a critical infrastructure for game developers seeking to scale their titles by leveraging a massive, data-rich ecosystem.
- Facebook leverages its massive user base, including 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook and 800 million on Instagram, to help developers target players based on specific interests and platform engagement data.
- The Facebook SDK allows developers to track in-app events such as tutorial completion, level progression, and purchase history to optimize user acquisition.
- The 'Value Optimization' method, introduced in August 2016, enables developers to create custom audiences from high-value players and use them as seed audiences to find similar users globally.