Retention reports and market data
Documents
Multiscription’s Teis Anker Mikkelsen On Unleashing Your Game’s Exposure With A Subscription Service
The mobile gaming industry is increasingly adopting subscription models to combat market volatility and improve long-term player retention.
- Multiscription’s Unleashd service utilizes a cross-publisher subscription model to bundle free-to-play mobile games, aiming to stabilize revenue and improve long-term player retention.
- The revenue-sharing model allocates 70 percent of the five-euro monthly subscription fee to publishers, with the remaining 30 percent covering platform fees.
- Publisher payouts consist of a fixed bounty for the initial user conversion—which persists for the duration of the subscription—and a variable component based on time spent within specific titles.
Assetario’s Matej Novak On Using Machine Learning To Predict Player Needs And Make A Profit
Assetario provides machine learning as a service to mobile game publishers, focusing on predictive analytics to optimize monetization, user acquisition, and pricing strategies.
- Assetario’s machine learning platform enables mobile game publishers to increase player lifetime value (LTV) by up to 30%, as demonstrated by clients like Century Games.
- The platform utilizes predictive analytics to identify individual player spending patterns and needs within the first 24 hours of gameplay, allowing for immediate optimization of user acquisition campaigns.
- Assetario automates monetization strategies including personalized in-app purchase offers, global pricing adjustments based on regional economic indicators like GDP per capita, and user acquisition forecasting.
Leanplum’s Yeshas Nakshathri On Reinventing Live Ops And Deciphering Your Data
Modern mobile game development requires a fundamental shift toward efficient, data-driven live operations to maintain user engagement and revenue growth.
- Implementing automated, hyper-personalized in-app messaging can drive a 300% increase in event-based revenue while simultaneously reducing dependency on engineering resources.
- Modern live operations must shift from manual, engineering-heavy workflows to automated platforms that empower marketing teams to execute complex campaigns independently.
- Effective hyper-personalization relies on behavioral triggers that engage users at context-aware moments, fostering habit formation rather than relying on static content updates.
Why Games are Designed to Leave You Wanting
Modern game design frequently employs a psychological strategy known as the paradox of satisfaction, which intentionally denies players a sense of complete fulfillment to ensure long-term engagement.
- Modern game design utilizes the 'paradox of satisfaction' to intentionally deny players complete fulfillment, ensuring long-term engagement through a state of perpetual craving.
- Developers structure games to avoid definitive narrative or mechanical closure, which keeps players within a cycle of consumption for sequels, season passes, and microtransactions.
- Competitive multiplayer games leverage performance metrics and progression treadmills to ensure that even after a victory, players feel compelled to queue for additional matches.
Panel: A Love Story: Essential Strategies to Attract (& Keep) an Audience.
Establishing a resonant game identity early in development is the foundational requirement for attracting and retaining a sustainable audience.
- Design games with a specific, well-defined audience in mind rather than relying on broad, ineffective demographic labels like 'millennial men.'
- Validate player feedback by investigating the root cause of requests; for example, increasing the volume of a weapon's sound effect can satisfy player demands for 'more power' without requiring actual mechanical changes.
- Prioritize authenticity when partnering with influencers by conducting research to ensure their content and values align with your specific game, rather than simply targeting the largest creators.
The value of a user is not only monetary | Alex Pham from Adjust
Mobile marketing analytics requires a strategic shift toward privacy-first infrastructure and holistic performance measurement.
- Mobile marketing must shift from deterministic tracking to privacy-first infrastructure, utilizing predictive modeling and aggregated intelligence to navigate regulations like GDPR and Apple’s SKAdNetwork.
- Success requires moving beyond cost-per-install metrics to evaluate long-term user value, specifically focusing on retention, virality, and delayed monetization patterns.
- Developers are increasingly adopting all-in-one platforms that integrate analytics, visualization, and campaign automation to improve efficiency and manage leaner teams amid industry consolidation.
Understanding the important events in your app | Neasa Bannon from Meta
Optimizing user acquisition and advertising performance in the mobile gaming sector requires a strategic shift toward automation, privacy-compliant measurement, and creative innovation.
- Advertisers must shift from granular, user-level tracking to aggregate measurement solutions like conversion lift testing and marketing mix modeling to maintain efficacy in a privacy-centric landscape.
- Developers should refine conversion schemas to prioritize high-value in-app events and analyze customer lifetime value rather than focusing solely on bottom-funnel acquisition metrics.
- Integrating AI and automation tools is essential for achieving liquidity and efficient campaign scaling across Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms, which serve several billion monthly active users.
Panel: Increasing the Value of Your Games Through Better Player Support -
Effective player support serves as a foundational pillar for long-term player retention and overall commercial success, yet it is frequently relegated to an afterthought during the initial development cycle.
- Shift player support from a reactive cost center to a strategic asset to mitigate revenue loss and improve long-term player retention.
- Integrate support solutions into the initial development cycle to ensure seamless scalability for game launches and seasonal volatility.
- Implement a hybrid operational model that uses AI-driven automation for routine inquiries while reserving human agents for complex, high-value interactions.
Panel: Interaction & Iteration: Best Practices for Getting the Most out of Your Live Ops Strategy.
Successful live operations strategies in the modern gaming industry necessitate an agile, iterative development mindset that prioritizes long-term engagement over traditional, static release cycles.
- Live operations must be integrated into the initial design phase rather than treated as a post-launch afterthought to ensure infrastructure and support tools are ready for player behavior and scaling.
- The quality of the core game loop remains the primary determinant of long-term success, as live operations cannot compensate for a fundamentally flawed foundational experience.
- Data-driven decision-making, specifically through A/B testing and structured player feedback, is essential for validating mechanics and creating resilient engagement loops.
Panel: Playing Together How To Boost Retention by Adding World-class Multiplayer Options
Integrating real-time multiplayer functionality has become a fundamental requirement for modern mobile games, serving as a primary driver for long-term retention and increased lifetime value.
- Real-time multiplayer is a fundamental requirement for modern mobile games, serving as a primary driver for long-term retention and increased lifetime value.
- Multiplayer architecture must be integrated from a project's inception, as retrofitting these systems into existing single-player frameworks is prohibitively expensive and inefficient.
- Developers can leverage third-party infrastructure tools like Photon, PlayFab, and Quantum to manage complex networking and backend requirements without exhaustive custom development.
Keynote Evolving Game Monetisation Retention - Don Reilley, EVP of Publisher Development, Scuti
The current gaming industry faces significant challenges, including rising user acquisition costs, declining ad revenues, and a reliance on disruptive monetization models that often alienate players.
- Integrating 'g-commerce'—a model where players earn rewards through gameplay and shopping—can generate $1.2 million in annual revenue for a game with 100,000 daily active users.
- A single g-commerce interaction can replace the revenue equivalent of five months of disruptive advertising, offering a non-intrusive alternative to traditional ad models.
- While only 5% of gamers currently make in-game purchases, 51% of players express interest in purchasing physical goods directly within a gaming environment.
Demystifying Machine Learning for Programmatic UA & Retargeting - Joseph Iris, Persona.ly.
Machine learning in programmatic user acquisition (UA) and retargeting is often misunderstood as a "black box," but it is fundamentally rooted in statistical modeling and data-driven decision-making.
- Machine learning in programmatic UA optimizes bidding and creative selection within a 100 to 300-millisecond window during real-time auctions to maximize ROI.
- Privacy-centric shifts like iOS’s SKAdNetwork require a transition to contextual targeting, utilizing NLP to create app embeddings that identify relationships without granular user-level data.
- Multi-armed and contextual bandits enable real-time creative optimization by dynamically allocating inventory based on specific user attributes.