Mobile reports and market data
Documents
Session: 2026: The Year UA Could Become Good, Fast, & Cheap? - Alex Engel, Layer AI.
The mobile gaming industry is approaching a pivotal shift in User Acquisition (UA) where the traditional constraints of the "iron triangle"—balancing quality, speed, and cost—are being dismantled by advancements in generative AI.
- By 2026, the integration of AI reasoning models and node-based workflows is expected to resolve the 'iron triangle' of UA by enabling the production of high-quality, low-cost, and rapid creative assets at scale.
- The cost of generating high-definition video assets has dropped significantly, with current models like Cling 2.5 costing approximately 10 cents per second and V03.1 costing 27 cents per megapixel second.
- New training frameworks and custom LoRA models now allow for style-consistent asset generation using as few as a dozen images in a training set.
Curated Panel: How Brands & Publishers Are Navigating The New Gaming Media Landscape In 2026.
The gaming media landscape in 2026 is undergoing a fundamental transition as publishers and brands move away from a singular focus on performance-based advertising toward more sophisticated, brand-centric strategies.
- The gaming media landscape in 2026 is shifting from performance-based advertising to brand-centric strategies that prioritize user retention and revenue diversification.
- Publishers are increasingly integrating non-intrusive, custom in-game placements to keep users within their ecosystems and prevent churn to external competitors.
- Measurement is evolving beyond simple app-install KPIs to include first-party data, brand lift studies, and attention-based metrics that align with broader marketing objectives.
Panel: The Future Of Monetisation: Is Now The Time To Take Advantage Of Direct-To-Consumer?
Direct-to-consumer monetization has emerged as a critical strategic imperative for mobile game publishers, driven by the necessity to capture higher margins amidst evolving regulatory landscapes and platform-level changes like IDFA.
- Bypassing traditional in-app payment rails through direct-to-consumer (D2C) web shops can increase net revenue by more than 20 percent.
- Once a player completes their first purchase on a web shop, subsequent conversion rates for that user can reach as high as 97 percent.
- D2C strategies are currently most prevalent in the midcore and casino genres, where web shops are used as tools for holistic player engagement rather than just payment processing.
Fireside Chat: How Yodo1 Grew Transformers: Earth Wars Webshop Revenue Share 2.2× In Under A Year.
This discussion examines the successful implementation of a direct-to-consumer (DTC) web shop strategy for the mobile game Transformers: Earth Wars, which resulted in a 2.2-fold increase in web shop revenue share within one year.
- Yodo1 Games increased the webshop revenue share for Transformers: Earth Wars by 2.2x in under a year by shifting player spending away from in-game stores to a direct-to-consumer (DTC) web platform.
- Moving transactions to a webshop allows developers to bypass the 25-30% commission fees typically charged by Google and Apple, significantly increasing profit margins.
- To drive initial traffic and habituate users to the webshop, Yodo1 offered free gifts and lower-value conversion bundles that were not available inside the game.
Session: The End of Global DTC: How Regulation Is Forcing Regional Player Flows - Archie Stonehill.
The global landscape for direct-to-consumer (DTC) game distribution is undergoing a significant transformation driven by a patchwork of regional regulations and legal challenges.
- The global DTC landscape is shifting from a uniform model to a fragmented, country-by-country regulatory framework that requires developers to adopt agile, region-specific distribution strategies.
- In the U.S., the dismantling of anti-steering restrictions since 2021 has enabled link-out strategies that now account for over 50% of transaction volume for some developers.
- Regulatory environments currently fall into three archetypes: traditional (restrictive), open steering (U.S.-style, allowing tax-free web checkouts), and taxed/mixed (EU-style, which often includes new fees or UX limitations).
Panel: David vs Goliath: How Can Smaller Studios Compete With Big Studios In The UA Space?
The current user acquisition landscape has shifted away from the pursuit of unsustainable scale toward a model defined by precision, accuracy, and rigorous fundamentals.
- Smaller studios should prioritize precision and controlled spending over high-volume capital expenditure to avoid the inefficiencies inherent in large-scale, automated acquisition strategies.
- High-quality, human-centric creative and founder-led storytelling consistently outperform mass-produced, automated assets in driving meaningful user engagement and conversion.
- Developers should validate product-market fit through early community feedback and data literacy before committing to paid acquisition to prevent premature creative burnout.
Session: Re-Engagement In 2026: How To Design & Scale Winning Retargeting Campaigns - Joseph Iris.
Retargeting has evolved into a critical component of mobile marketing, now accounting for approximately 30% of total app marketing spend.
- Retargeting now accounts for approximately 30% of all mobile app marketing spend, driven by shorter user attention spans and the maturation of probabilistic retargeting on iOS.
- Probabilistic retargeting, which matches IP addresses to users, has seen a 600% growth in industry adoption over the past year as a primary method for measuring iOS campaigns.
- Inactivity windows—the time before a user is considered dormant—are trending shorter, with many apps shifting from 7-day windows to 4-day windows or 28-day windows to 14-day windows to remain competitive.
Fireside Chat: Money Talks - Listening To Buyer Signals - Adam Smart & Edik Mitelman, AppsFlyer.
The data collaboration platform SignalHub, developed by AppsFlyer, enables gaming companies to leverage real-world consumer spending data for highly targeted user acquisition.
- AppsFlyer’s Signal Hub platform allows game studios to build custom user acquisition audiences based on real-world consumer spending data from partners like Mastercard, Factures, and Equifax.
- The platform enables targeting based on specific merchant transactions, product SKUs, spending ranges, and socioeconomic status, allowing studios to reach users with high propensities for in-app purchases.
- Data is processed through a privacy-compliant, hashed, and encrypted environment where no raw data is downloadable or shared, meeting strict audit requirements from major financial institutions.
Session: Bringing Your Mobile Title To The Epic Games Store - Walter Somol, Epic Games
The Epic Games Store (EGS) is actively expanding its footprint as a multi-platform ecosystem, positioning itself as a unified storefront for PC, Mac, iOS, and Android.
- The Epic Games Store (EGS) now offers a revenue share model where developers keep 100% of the first $1 million in revenue per title per year, followed by the standard 88/12 split.
- EGS operates as a multi-platform store across PC, Mac, Android (globally), and iOS (in the EU, with expansion planned for Brazil, Japan, and the UK).
- The platform achieved $1 billion in total PC ecosystem spend in 2024, with over two-thirds of its players actively engaging with third-party content rather than just first-party titles.
Panel: Best Practices For Navigating The Rewarded UA Space.
Rewarded user acquisition has evolved from a volume-centric strategy into a sophisticated, data-driven channel focused on long-term player loyalty.
- Rewarded user acquisition has evolved from a high-fraud, low-quality volume play into a data-driven channel that provides high-intent users who engage with games deeply to reach specific milestones.
- Unlike traditional media sources that may require up to 365 days to realize ROI, rewarded UA allows developers to recover costs and generate revenue earlier, facilitating faster reinvestment and scaling.
- Modern rewarded platforms utilize adaptive economy models and real-time automation to personalize reward structures based on individual user behavior, moving away from outdated fixed-CPI models.
Session: How To Get To 30% DTC Revenue Share - Omer Torok-Arlosoroff, Appcharge.
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) revenue strategies have transitioned from optional experiments to mandatory components for mobile game studios.
- Direct-to-consumer (DTC) web stores are now considered a mandatory strategy for mobile game studios, with top performers achieving 30% to 40% of their total revenue share through these channels.
- Achieving three repeat purchases on a web store creates a high retention threshold, with an 84% probability that the user will continue to conduct the majority of their future transactions there.
- Web store offers should prioritize adding 15% to 25% more value to a purchase rather than offering simple discounts, as this approach is more effective at driving both first-time deposits and higher average revenue per user.
What do game developers really think of Project Genie? | Week in Mobile Games podcast
Google’s introduction of Project Genie, an AI-driven tool capable of generating playable environments from text prompts, has sparked significant market volatility, notably impacting the stock valuations of established platforms like Unity and Roblox.
- Google’s Project Genie has caused market volatility for Unity and Roblox, but industry professionals view the tool as an experimental prototype that currently lacks the mechanical depth and narrative sophistication required for professional game production.
- Nintendo is approaching a milestone of one billion total console sales, reflecting a successful recovery from the Wii U era and the sustained strength of its current hardware ecosystem.
- Arz Interactive secured $70 million in Series A funding to target specific genre gaps within the sports gaming market.