User Acquisition reports and market data
Documents
Kwalee’s Ryan Davies On Shifting Marketing Tactics To Match The Shift In Hypercasual Games
The evolution of the gaming industry from hypercasual models toward hybrid and casual frameworks necessitates a fundamental shift in user acquisition strategies.
- The shift from hypercasual to hybrid and casual gaming models requires moving away from short-term metrics like Day 1 retention toward tracking specific in-game events and granular audience segmentation.
- Expansion into PC and console markets necessitates a transition from purely performance-driven marketing to traditional brand and probabilistic marketing strategies.
- Longer game lifecycles on PC and console platforms require developers to adopt a higher tolerance for risk and move away from the immediate feedback loops typical of mobile gaming.
PANEL: Creating Engagement: Marketing Tricks to Attract the Right Audience.
Modern gaming audiences have evolved significantly beyond traditional stereotypes, with gaming now surpassing television in total viewership across all age demographics, including seniors.
- Rewarded video advertisements achieve completion rates as high as 95% by providing players with tangible in-game benefits instead of interrupting the user experience.
- Gaming viewership has surpassed television across all age demographics, including seniors, necessitating a move away from outdated player stereotypes toward data-driven targeting.
- Privacy regulations like Apple’s IDFA are forcing a shift away from traditional tracking toward contextual targeting and high-quality creative assets.
East Meets West: How to Grow Your Game in APAC - Jamie Zhang, Nativex
The Asia-Pacific (APAC) region represents the world’s largest gaming market, home to 1.5 billion gamers and generating approximately $88 billion in annual revenue, which accounts for nearly half of the global total.
- The APAC region is the world's largest gaming market, housing 1.5 billion gamers and generating $88 billion in annual revenue, which accounts for nearly 50% of the global total.
- Market entry is highly complex due to regional fragmentation, requiring developers to navigate distinct regulatory environments, such as China’s ISBN approval and real-name verification requirements.
- Genre preferences are culturally specific: Chinese players favor immersive RPGs and strategy games, Japanese audiences prefer anime-inspired RPGs, and South Korean and Southeast Asian markets prioritize competitive, social, and esports titles.
Mobile Games: State of the Market H1 2023
The mobile gaming market in the first half of 2023 experienced a period of contraction across most genres, characterized by a decline in both download volumes and revenue compared to the same period in 2022.
- Mobile gaming revenue declined in H1 2023, yet the sector still accounts for 51% of total mobile app revenue and 29.6% of total downloads.
- The RPG genre remains the top revenue generator globally, despite a significant decline from $5.9 billion in H1 2022 to $4.4 billion in H1 2023.
- Gaming advertisers now represent 50.7% of all mobile advertisers, marking a 22% increase in advertising volume compared to the previous year.
Influencer Marketing 101
Influencer marketing serves as a critical growth engine for the gaming industry, particularly for PC and core mobile titles.
- Influencer marketing for games should prioritize authentic, long-term partnerships over transactional advertisements, with hyper-casual titles requiring deep creative integration like embedding an influencer’s likeness into game mechanics.
- Campaigns should utilize a hybrid strategy: large creators for broad brand awareness and networks of smaller influencers to drive performance-based conversions.
- Agencies should vet talent using rigorous metrics, specifically targeting engagement rates between 5% and 20% alongside cost-per-mille analysis.
Tactile Games’ Plamen Stefanov On Bringing Breakout Success To Your Casual Game
Achieving breakout success in the competitive casual mobile gaming market requires a rigorous, data-centric approach to user acquisition that prioritizes long-term retention over immediate vanity metrics.
- Prioritize day-seven return on ad spend (ROAS) as the primary metric for user acquisition to ensure marketing investments drive sustainable long-term retention rather than vanity metrics.
- Validate new game features and mini-game concepts by testing them as video creatives before committing significant development resources to full integration.
- Foster a culture of continuous experimentation by allocating dedicated budgets to test new advertising partners and creative iterations to identify high-performing channels.
Practical Use Cases of AI in Marketing Communication - Peter Fodor, CEO & Founder, AppAgent
The integration of artificial intelligence into marketing communication serves as a powerful catalyst for operational efficiency and creative output within the mobile gaming industry.
- AI integration in mobile marketing enables teams to reduce production timelines from days to hours by automating the creation of high-volume creative assets.
- Midjourney and DALL-E are used to generate initial design concepts, icons, and backgrounds, which are then refined by human designers to ensure brand and technical standards.
- Stable Diffusion is applied to sharpen low-resolution gameplay footage and adjust character portrait realism, allowing for high-quality visuals even when source assets are limited.
DoubleDown Interactive’s Faith Price On The Sweet Spot For A Successful Soft Launch
The mobile gaming industry is undergoing a fundamental shift away from protracted soft launch periods toward compressed development cycles.
- Mobile studios are shifting away from protracted soft launches toward compressed development cycles to mitigate the financial risks associated with rising user acquisition costs.
- Product development and growth marketing teams must operate in tandem from the conceptual phase to validate game viability and optimize performance metrics within tighter timeframes.
- Early integration of growth teams allows for the evaluation of creative hooks and the management of cost-per-install metrics before a game reaches a broader market.
How to scale hyper or hybrid casual games with Unity ROAS campaigns
Unity’s Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) campaigns, branded as Audience Pinpointer, serve as an automated user acquisition tool designed to optimize advertising performance by predicting the value of individual users.
- Unity Audience Pinpointer automates user acquisition by using post-install metrics like IAP, ad revenue, and retention to predict and bid on high-value users.
- To enable ROAS campaigns, developers must first reach minimum install thresholds via standard campaigns to provide the algorithm with sufficient baseline data.
- Maximum bids should be set at two to three times the observed average CPI to ensure the algorithm remains competitive and is not capped during auctions.
PREVIEW: Wishlist And Visibility Masterclass 2.0
The Steam visibility masterclass focuses on demystifying the platform’s algorithmic filtering process to help independent developers maximize their game’s reach.
- Steam’s algorithm prioritizes titles that reach a revenue milestone of approximately $250,000, which serves as the critical threshold for sustained, platform-wide promotion.
- Visibility on Steam is structured as a tiered system where a small percentage of top-performing games receive the vast majority of impressions, while others are algorithmically deprioritized.
- Before launch, Steam’s algorithm gauges a game's potential by monitoring external traffic sources, including social media and streaming platforms.
WHOW Games’ Tobias Edl On Growth Hacks And Top Tips For Standing Out In The F2P World
Tobias Edl, Director of Marketing and New Business at WHOW Games, outlines strategies for achieving sustainable growth and player loyalty in the competitive free-to-play (F2P) social casino market.
- Long-term growth in the social casino market is achieved by prioritizing immersive, gamified product design and multi-year media partnerships over short-term performance marketing tactics.
- WHOW Games differentiates its 'My Jackpot' title by applying casual puzzle game mechanics, such as mission-based progression and real-time competitive events, to the casino genre to drive retention.
- The company maintains a 'test-everything' culture that continuously iterates on creative assets to optimize performance while ensuring all marketing materials remain authentic and non-deceptive.
SKIDOS’ Aditya Prakash On Mastering Organic Growth And Multiple Demographic Targeting
The edutainment sector is undergoing a significant transformation through the integration of pedagogical content into casual mobile gaming.
- SKIDOS operates an ecosystem of over 50 applications developed through a network of 30 studio partnerships, focusing on integrating pedagogical content into casual mobile games for children aged two to ten.
- The business model replaces traditional advertising and predatory in-app purchases with a subscription-based framework that provides parents with granular progress tracking and performance reporting.
- Organic growth is achieved through a sophisticated App Store Optimization strategy that leverages a vast portfolio of game versions to capture a wide array of search keywords.