User Acquisition reports and market data
Documents
TWIG #340 Scopely Goes to War, Roblox Gambles on IP and Turkey Rises
The mobile gaming industry is currently defined by an aggressive arms race in user acquisition, particularly within the coin-battler genre.
- The mobile coin-battler genre has become a 'red ocean' where market dominance is driven by industrial-scale user acquisition spending by giants like Scopely and Moon Active, creating high barriers to entry for smaller developers.
- Corporate friction is intensifying over performance-based earn-outs, exemplified by a dispute between Krafton and Unknown Worlds involving a $250 million earn-out and allegations of strategic project delays.
- Major publishers are increasingly integrating AI-driven development tools to streamline production, leading to staff reductions in design roles at companies like King.
Secrets Behind Monopoly Go’s Record-Breaking Launch with Ben Webley, CMO of Scopely
Monopoly GO! has achieved significant commercial success since its April 2023 launch, reaching $1 billion in revenue within seven months and surpassing $5 billion within two years.
- Monopoly GO! achieved $1 billion in revenue within seven months of its April 2023 launch and surpassed $5 billion in total revenue within two years.
- The game reached the number one spot in over 100 countries by treating the global Monopoly brand as a local entity, requiring thousands of culturalized creative asset variations for regional resonance.
- Scopely employs a 'break-the-concept' testing methodology that actively seeks to invalidate ideas, such as app icons, to ensure only the most resilient concepts reach production.
🎬 Creative Trends June 2025: Why AI, ASMR & Copy-Paste Are Redefining Mobile Ads
The mobile gaming advertising landscape in mid-2025 is defined by a strategic shift toward long-form video content and the aggressive iteration of proven creative concepts.
- Mobile gaming ads are shifting toward long-form content ranging from 50 seconds to five minutes to improve user pre-qualification and secure better auction placement.
- AI tools like Topaz AI are now the primary engine for mobile ad production, enabling rapid generation and upscaling of assets to mimic user-generated content styles.
- Developers are increasingly utilizing a 'copy-paste' strategy by re-skinning proven mechanics like resource management and character-saving puzzles to minimize innovation risk.
Without this data you're spending your marketing budget blindly - Cansu Agaoglu from Adjust
The mobile gaming industry is currently navigating a complex landscape defined by increasing privacy regulations and a shift toward data-driven marketing strategies.
- Mobile marketing professionals prioritizing AI and machine learning technologies rose from 19% in 2023 to 31% in 2025, reflecting a critical shift toward predictive analytics.
- Predictive analytics, such as calculating day-30 lifetime value from early user data, are essential for maintaining competitive advantages under privacy-first frameworks like Apple’s SKAdNetwork and Google’s Privacy Sandbox.
- Mobile measurement platforms are necessary to identify high-quality users and prevent blind budget allocation as the industry shifts toward complex hybrid monetization models.
Knit Out’s Turkish Blueprint: Rollic Games scaling puzzle games Like a PRO
Rollic Games has established a highly effective blueprint for scaling puzzle titles, exemplified by the success of Knit Out.
- Rollic Games' title 'Knit Out' generates $60,000 in daily revenue and secures 20,000 daily downloads, primarily from the U.S. market.
- The studio prioritizes rigorous internal benchmarks for retention and level difficulty before integrating meta-features or live-ops into their puzzle titles.
- Monetization is heavily weighted toward in-app purchases and rewarded videos, with ad revenue contributing only 23% to 30% of total income due to a strategic delay of interstitial ads.
Meta Ads 101: Mobile Apps
Effective mobile app advertising on Meta requires a sophisticated balance between algorithmic automation and rigorous strategic oversight.
- Shift from granular audience segmentation to broad targeting using Advantage+ placements to allow Meta’s machine learning to identify profitable inventory.
- Consolidate campaigns to provide sufficient data for the learning phase while isolating creative testing in separate environments to protect scaling performance.
- Prioritize down-funnel conversion events occurring within the first session, aiming for a 70-80% match rate between reported events and actual conversions.
Mobile Gaming by Genre: Hypercasual
The hypercasual segment continues to dominate mobile gaming revenue, with the top 100 titles achieving 5.48 billion downloads and $345 million in in-app purchase (IAP) revenue during the first half of 2025—double the figures from 2024 and the highest ever recorded for this genre.
- Hypercasual revenue for the top 100 titles is projected to reach $690 million in 2025, a significant increase from $403 million in 2024.
- H1 2025 performance for the top 100 hypercasual titles hit record highs of 5.48 billion downloads and $345 million in IAP revenue, doubling the figures from the same period in 2024.
- Leading publishers like AZUR GAMES, Supersonic Studios, and Voodoo are shifting toward hybrid-casual models that blend traditional advertising with deeper IAP monetization to extend player engagement.
Discord: New Platform Opportunities for Game Studios | BITKRAFT Summit 2024
Discord has transitioned from a niche voice communication tool into a comprehensive ecosystem for game development, distribution, and monetization.
- Discord has evolved into a major game development and distribution ecosystem, leveraging a base of 200 million monthly active users to shorten the distance between production and player consumption.
- The 'Activities' ecosystem enables developers to deploy stateful, interactive games directly within private, small-group servers, fostering a social-first gameplay loop that improves retention.
- Studios are increasingly using the platform to involve communities in the earliest prototyping phases, creating robust feedback loops and driving organic peer-to-peer sharing.
How to 10x Your Revenue in a Tough Market by Paul West
Fumb Games achieved a tenfold revenue increase in 2024, reaching $10 million in annual revenue despite a challenging industry climate characterized by layoffs and economic instability.
- Fumb Games achieved a 10x revenue increase in 2024 by pivoting focus to proven niches, specifically rebranding a casual project into 'Idle Mine,' which generated $1 million in revenue within 60 days of launch.
- The studio shifted its monetization strategy to prioritize subscriptions, which now account for 80% of purchase revenue in their new titles, providing higher value than one-time in-app purchases.
- To scale UA, the studio moved away from a strict three-day payback window, opting for longer, more sophisticated payback periods while consolidating their ad network spend to the four most effective platforms.
Google Ads for Mobile Apps: Choosing the Best Optimization Event
Optimizing mobile app campaigns requires a strategic shift from prioritizing low-cost installs toward focusing on high-value, predictive in-app events.
- Prioritize optimization for high-value, predictive in-app events rather than low-cost installs to align campaign performance with long-term metrics like lifetime value and monthly active user growth.
- Select optimization events that occur at a minimum frequency of 30 times per day to provide sufficient data for machine learning algorithms.
- Target events that manifest within a short 24- to 72-hour window post-install to ensure the feedback loop is tight enough for effective campaign optimization.
How to launch a Mobile App Startup with No Investment
Launching a mobile app startup without external capital requires a strategic shift from pursuing speculative, high-growth trends toward solving specific, painful problems.
- Prioritize solving specific, painful problems over pursuing speculative high-growth trends to ensure long-term sustainability without external capital.
- Utilize a lean, bootstrapped model to maintain total autonomy and equity, focusing on profitability at a small scale rather than rapid, resource-heavy scaling.
- Integrate artificial intelligence tools to replace early-stage hires, effectively bridging skill gaps and reducing overhead costs for small teams.
Session: Understanding The Creator-Driven Growth Engine For Mobile Games
The creator-driven growth engine for mobile games has evolved from a transactional model of purchasing ad space to a sophisticated, relationship-based strategy centered on long-term community engagement.
- Creator marketing has shifted from simple ad placements to long-term relationship building, requiring agencies or partners to manage collaborations at scale across the millions of available YouTube and TikTok channels.
- Successful creator programs, such as those used by Epic Games for Fortnite, utilize creator codes to link the game's economy directly to the creator economy, incentivizing influencers to drive both new installs and in-app purchases.
- Measuring success solely through direct install attribution is insufficient, as much of the value from creator-driven growth is evergreen, organic, and uncaptured by standard tracking models.