Monetization reports and market data
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MDM Podcast, Season 7, Episode 11: Understanding Unity's Vector (with Felix The)
Unity’s Vector platform represents a strategic evolution in mobile user acquisition by leveraging the company’s dual role as a game engine provider and an advertising network.
- Unity's 'Vector' advertising product leverages engine-level runtime data to improve user acquisition performance by providing high-fidelity, sequential event signals that are superior to traditional, often fragmented, software development kit (SDK) data.
- Unity is shifting from fragmented machine learning approaches to 'massive unified models' that allow for better autocorrelation, covariance, and causal understanding of user behavior across the advertising ecosystem.
- The company is prioritizing generative AI tools that focus on improving Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) rather than just increasing creative volume, ensuring that advertisers do not simply shift costs from production to marketing without performance gains.
How to leverage incentivised rewards for high value UA | Nicholas Bloom from Exmox #PGConnects
The incentivized user acquisition (UA) sector has emerged as a significant force in the mobile gaming industry, currently accounting for approximately 30% of the total UA marketing share.
- Exmox, a rewarded user acquisition platform, facilitates high-LTV traffic by incentivizing users with cash rewards to complete specific in-game events, currently accounting for approximately 30% of the total UA marketing share of voice.
- Exmox plans to triple its UA spend in 2026 to $300 million, following a $100 million spend in 2025 and a doubling of its internal headcount from approximately 60 to 120 employees.
- Rewarded UA platforms require users to opt-in to tracking to function; this acts as a necessary trade-off for users to receive rewards, as the platform must verify in-game event completion via MMPs in real-time to trigger payouts.
Google Play's Rate Cuts: Winners, Losers, and Unknowns
The recent settlement between Epic Games and Google has fundamentally altered the mobile gaming landscape by introducing a tiered commission structure that challenges the long-standing 30 percent platform fee.
- The Epic Games and Google settlement introduces a tiered commission structure, allowing developers to reduce platform fees from 30 percent to between 15 and 20 percent through the Level Up program.
- Eligibility for reduced fees requires developers to integrate Google’s AI tools, achievement systems, and cloud infrastructure, leading many major studios to express concerns over potential user experience degradation and loss of proprietary data control.
- The settlement legitimizes direct-to-consumer web shops by explicitly permitting developers to steer users toward off-platform payment options, enabling them to bypass platform fees entirely.
The final word on GDC | Week in Mobile Games podcast
The Game Developers Conference faces a precarious future following a sharp decline in 2024, where attendance plummeted by 33% to 20,000 participants and exhibitor numbers reached their lowest level since 2012.
- Starting June 2026, PEGI will expand its age rating criteria to include in-game monetization and online features, with games containing loot boxes or paid random items likely defaulting to a PEGI 16 rating.
- Epic Games Store GM Steve Allison described the recent Google-Epic settlement, which allows developers to keep more revenue, as a 'meaningful reset' that provides developers with a toolkit to improve margins.
- King’s Farm Heroes Saga has surpassed $2 billion in lifetime revenue, highlighting the continued success of the studio's casual portfolio despite its historical, largely unsuccessful attempts to pivot toward midcore titles.
Model Dev Memo Podcast, Season 7, Episode 5: Ads in ChatGPT (with Rishabh Jain)
The integration of advertising into ChatGPT represents an economically rational evolution designed to scale the platform while enhancing user discovery.
- OpenAI's transition to an advertising model is an economically rational move that allows the company to fund product improvements while providing users with access to more advanced models.
- The initial high-CPM (cost per mille) entry strategy is likely a deliberate tactic to prioritize signal collection and system training over immediate mass-market adoption.
- OpenAI is expected to prioritize large, established brands for early ad placements to minimize user friction and avoid the risks associated with niche or controversial product targeting.
TWiG #375: GDC 2026 Post-Mortem, Epic’s Surrender & Google Play’s Legal Rebirth
The global gaming industry is currently navigating a period of significant structural recalibration, marked by declining event attendance and shifting platform economics.
- GDC 2026 attendance has declined by 30% compared to 2011 levels, signaling a structural shift away from mass-market conventions toward exclusive, executive-focused events.
- Google Play’s recent 5% reduction in service fees is considered insufficient to offset the rising costs of user acquisition, despite improvements in user friction through the removal of installation scare screens.
- Epic Games is pivoting away from protracted legal battles toward internal platform growth, focusing on self-publishing and cross-platform social features rather than alternative mobile app stores.
The Loot box Lawsuit, Valve Vs. New York State | Design Club
The New York Attorney General has initiated legal action against Valve, asserting that the loot box mechanics within Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2 function as illegal gambling operations.
- The New York State Attorney General is suing Valve, alleging that the loot box systems in Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2 facilitate illegal gambling, particularly among minors.
- The lawsuit seeks to force Valve to cease these practices and pay significant disgorgement and fines, calculated as the total amount lost by New York residents plus additional penalties.
- Valve maintains a strict $2,000 limit on Steam community market transactions to avoid being legally classified as a bank under federal regulations.
🚨📢 Breaking News: Apple AI money, rewarded roll-up, mobile funding wave
The mobile gaming industry is currently defined by three major trends: the indirect monetization of generative AI, a resurgence in venture capital funding for game studios, and the consolidation of rewarded user acquisition (UA) platforms.
- Major industry players are prioritizing control over distribution infrastructure, evidenced by NCSoft’s $202 million acquisition of a 70% stake in Just Play and Nazara Technologies’ $100 million investment in Blue Tile and Best Play.
- The mobile gaming industry is undergoing a consolidation of rewarded user acquisition firms, allowing companies to build proprietary ecosystems that bypass traditional ad networks.
- Apple is projected to generate nearly $1 billion in annual revenue from third-party generative AI applications by collecting 15% to 30% commission fees on subscriptions through the App Store.
Can new age rating rules prevent a video game ban?
The European video game industry is undergoing a significant shift in self-regulation as PEGI introduces a comprehensive age-rating framework designed to address modern gameplay mechanics.
- PEGI is updating its age-rating framework to include labels for loot boxes, social casino elements, NFTs, and retention-focused mechanics like play-by-appointment systems.
- This proactive self-regulation strategy aims to align European standards with German USK requirements and mitigate the risk of government-imposed bans on monetization features.
- Unlike the North American ESRB, which focuses strictly on traditional content, PEGI is integrating non-content features to reflect the realities of modern live-service game design.
Epic Games Store, Love and Deepspace, Fortnite, Google Play, data nuggets, new games and more
The mobile gaming industry is currently navigating a period of significant structural shifts, characterized by the ongoing struggle to challenge the Apple and Google store duopoly and the evolution of developer-platform relationships.
- Fortnite is returning to the Google Play Store worldwide as of March 19, nearly six years after being removed, with Epic Games processing its own payments while Google retains a 20% commission on in-app purchases.
- Epic Games is facing challenges breaking the Apple and Google mobile store duopoly, with its own store currently limited to Android worldwide and iOS in the EU, the latter representing only 8% of the global market.
- Infold Games' hit otome title 'Love and Deepspace' has reached over 80 million players two years post-launch, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue after a six-year development cycle.
State of Gaming 2026: What’s Really Winning Now
The global gaming landscape in 2026 is defined by a distinct bifurcation between the saturation of free-to-play mobile titles and the renewed dominance of premium, high-quality experiences.
- Chinese developers are currently the primary drivers of global industry growth, utilizing large-scale teams, proprietary AI tools, and aggressive user acquisition to dominate genres from strategy to interactive storytelling.
- The global gaming market is bifurcating, with free-to-play mobile titles experiencing stagnant revenue and declining downloads while premium, high-quality experiences see renewed dominance.
- Successful premium titles like Battlefield 6 are shifting marketing strategies by prioritizing traditional media channels over viral social media campaigns.
Gaming Is Becoming The Commerce Layer
The gaming industry is undergoing a structural transformation, evolving from a pure entertainment medium into a foundational commerce layer that connects developers, brands, and global players.
- Gaming is transitioning from a pure entertainment medium into a central commerce layer that connects developers, brands, and players through integrated marketplace infrastructure.
- Direct-to-consumer (D2C) web shops have become a strategic necessity for mobile game developers to own the player experience and bypass traditional platform constraints.
- Casual games are showing high adoption rates for web shops because their user base is already accustomed to e-commerce behaviors like browsing, adding to carts, and checking out.