User Acquisition reports and market data
Documents
Game Analytics 101: Why waiting "One more week" can kill your game!
Retention serves as the foundational metric for growth in the free-to-play mobile gaming sector, as monetization remains impossible without a consistent, active player base.
- Profitability in free-to-play mobile games requires that Lifetime Value (LTV) consistently exceeds the Cost Per Install (CPI), making retention the foundational metric for growth.
- Developers must hit specific Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) targets by Day 7; failing to meet these early benchmarks is a strong indicator that acquisition costs will not be recouped.
- Waiting for ad network performance to improve after missing early benchmarks is a strategic error, as the time required to break even increases exponentially when initial targets are missed.
Google Ads for Mobile Games: Best Practices for Apps with Hybrid Monetization
Hybrid mobile game studios must align their bidding strategies with the specific lifecycle stage of their applications to achieve sustainable growth.
- Hybrid monetization success requires integrating ad revenue data with in-app purchase signals to enable accurate value-based bidding for Google’s algorithms.
- Studios must transition bidding strategies from volume-focused install campaigns during launch to action-based or ROAS-focused bidding as the application matures.
- Campaigns require a daily budget of $50 to $100 to successfully exit the algorithm's learning phase and avoid premature scaling issues.
Why Data Is The New Superpower In Gaming!
The mobile gaming industry has entered a complex era where traditional tracking identifiers are no longer sufficient for growth.
- Prioritize ATT (App Tracking Transparency) consent as the primary growth strategy, as effective pre-prompt messaging can increase opt-in rates from 10–15% to as high as 40–50%.
- Adopt a holistic measurement stack by combining SKAN 4.0, web-to-app flows, and Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) rather than relying on any single attribution method.
- Implement Conversions API (CAPI) to send server-side signals like hashed emails and phone numbers to ad platforms, which improves matching rates and targeting efficiency, particularly for PC and console games moving to mobile.
Is User Acquisition Really Broken in 2025?
User acquisition in 2025 remains a robust and essential growth engine for the mobile gaming industry, despite widespread perceptions that the sector is in decline.
- AppLovin currently dominates the user acquisition ecosystem by leveraging its MAX mediation platform integrated with the Axon 2 machine learning engine to create a superior data flywheel.
- Modern user acquisition has shifted from aggressive growth hacking to a model defined by incremental profitability, product quality, and sophisticated value optimization.
- Unity is attempting to challenge AppLovin’s market position with its Vector engine, which seeks to utilize in-app purchase data, though it currently faces significant technical and operational scaling hurdles.
Granny: The untapped goldmine of horror games on mobile! How Granny Broke YouTube & TikTok?
The mobile horror genre, anchored by the runaway success of the Granny franchise, demonstrates that high-fidelity graphics and traditional user acquisition strategies are unnecessary for achieving massive scale.
- The Granny franchise has achieved nearly half a billion total downloads across its titles, with the original game still generating 14 million downloads per month seven years after its release.
- The game sustains a daily ad revenue of approximately $50,000 despite lacking a formal user acquisition (UA) strategy, relying entirely on organic virality from YouTube Let's Plays and TikTok.
- The developer potentially left $50 million in revenue on the table by failing to implement proper ad mediation, relying instead on limited demand sources that significantly underperform compared to optimized setups.
The Real Story Behind Tasty Travels’ Meteoric Rise: Merge, Monetize, Repeat!
The merge game category is currently defined by intense competition and rapid evolution, with established titles like Travel Town and Seaside Escape facing pressure from aggressive newcomers such as Tasty Travels and Merge Cooking.
- Century Games' new title, Tasty Travels, is rapidly scaling toward $200,000 in daily revenue and currently boasts double the ARPDAU of competitor Travel Town.
- The merge game category is experiencing significant growth, with Gossip Harbor generating approximately $1.6 million per day and Travel Town and Seaside Escape each earning roughly $600,000 daily.
- Century Games utilizes an aggressive UA strategy characterized by high-velocity creative iteration, including AI-generated content, fake gameplay hooks, and concepts directly adapted from competitors like Gossip Harbor.
Pushing value into a digital ad ecosystem - Ben Jeger from Moloco
Moloco, a demand-side platform (DSP) specializing in user acquisition and ad monetization, has established itself as a significant player in the global gaming ecosystem.
- Moloco’s monetization SDK, launched in early 2024, became one of the fastest-growing in industry history, leading the company to temporarily pause onboarding new publishers to focus on product development.
- Moloco differentiates its monetization offering by leveraging its existing position as a major buyer on ad exchanges, allowing it to drive value to advertisers without acting as a traditional middleman.
- The gaming industry has experienced a recent revenue flattening, with stagnation more prominent on Android while iOS continues to show growth, particularly among high-value payers in the US.
State of the Brutally Honest UA by Matej Lancaric
The 2025 user acquisition landscape is defined by a fundamental shift toward creative-led strategies, where the ability to produce high-volume, iterative content determines market success.
- Creative production is now the primary driver of UA performance, requiring teams to generate at least five new videos per week to combat rapid audience fatigue.
- 68% of industry professionals now utilize AI for tasks including scriptwriting, thumbnail optimization, and the generation of synthetic user-generated content.
- The UA manager role has fundamentally shifted from manual campaign administration to a hybrid function focused on creative prompt engineering and data analysis.
TikTok Advanced Dedicated Campaigns (ADC) for Mobile Apps
Advanced Dedicated Campaigns (ADC) represent a specialized, automated solution for mobile app advertisers on TikTok, specifically designed to navigate the complexities of iOS attribution and tracking.
- Advanced Dedicated Campaigns (ADC) utilize machine learning to optimize ad delivery via SKAdNetwork signals, effectively automating targeting to improve CPI and ROAS for iOS mobile app campaigns.
- The primary trade-off of ADC is a loss of granular audience and demographic data, as the platform prioritizes conversion scale over manual targeting control.
- Campaign performance is heavily dependent on high-volume, native-style creative assets, specifically requiring a consistent rotation of user-generated content (UGC).
Inside $500M/Year Bending Spoons: TikTok Trends, Viral videos, UA & Paywall Science
Bending Spoons functions as a hybrid between a technology firm and a private equity entity, managing a $2.5 billion portfolio of utility-focused applications including Remini, Splice, Evernote, and WeTransfer.
- Bending Spoons generates $500 million in annual revenue by acquiring apps, optimizing their design and subscription flows, and scaling them through aggressive user acquisition.
- The company’s portfolio includes high-performing apps like Remini, which achieves 300,000 daily installs, and Splice, which generates $120,000 in daily in-app purchase revenue.
- Bending Spoons utilizes 'Superwall-style' paywalls that limit functionality for free users, a strategy that has become a industry-standard template for maximizing conversion rates from install to subscription.
Make Your Indie Game Go Viral
Achieving viral success in the independent game market requires a strategic synthesis of high-concept design, psychological targeting, and data-driven marketing.
- Prioritize game concepts that mirror proven, high-performing media tropes—such as the narrative structure of popular TV shows—to ensure immediate market appeal and high potential for virality.
- Design games with a clear, linear narrative arc that introduces conflict at the start and resolves it at the end, as this structure significantly improves retention and content creator engagement.
- Optimize for YouTube marketing by incorporating distinct, recognizable character designs and vibrant color palettes, which increase both thumbnail click-through rates and overall game memorability.
2.5 gamers x Live Game Review - Hole People by Rollic Games
Hole People, published by Rollic Games, exemplifies the current evolution of the hyper-casual market, where deterministic puzzle mechanics are leveraged primarily as vehicles for low-cost user acquisition.
- Rollic Games has shifted its business model from producing many small games to focusing on high-revenue 'hit' titles, with a single successful game like Color Block Jam potentially outperforming the combined revenue of ten smaller projects.
- The game 'Hole People' utilizes a modular development approach where core mechanics—such as the bench system, boosters, and level design—are inserted into established templates, allowing for rapid production with minimal new feature development.
- The 'Hole' theme in 'Hole People' is primarily a strategic choice for User Acquisition (UA) to achieve low CPIs, rather than a core gameplay necessity, as the game mechanics are essentially a variation of existing puzzle-genre templates.