User Acquisition reports and market data
1,364 documents·55 writers·3,211 charts and tables
Documents
Report16 pages
Rewarded UA Handbook: 2026
Rewarded user acquisition (UA) has evolved into a foundational component of the mobile marketing mix, serving as a critical solution to the industry’s ongoing challenges of rising acquisition costs and high user churn.
- Rewarded UA is now a core marketing channel, with 61% of surveyed studios planning to increase their budget in 2026 and 65% of studios allocating between 11% and 50% of their total UA spend to the channel.
- Extending reward structures beyond traditional short-term windows is critical for retention; for example, Candivore increased their Match Masters reward structure from 50 to 90 days, resulting in a 50% increase in D60 retention and a 70% uplift in D90 ROAS.
- Campaigns that layer multiple event types outperform single-event campaigns, with IAP/hybrid games utilizing an average of 3.25 distinct event types per campaign to drive long-term engagement.
AlmediaJun 2026
Two & a Half Gamers25 min
🧠 What You Send Is What You Get: Signal Engineering and the Future of Attribution with Core Plan
Airbridge has introduced Core Plan, a self-serve, pay-as-you-go mobile measurement partner (MMP) solution designed to address the needs of early-stage app founders.
- Airbridge launched Core Plan, a self-serve MMP solution for startups with under $10 million in ARR, offering 15,000 free attributed installs in the first year followed by a pay-as-you-go rate of 5 cents per install.
- The platform utilizes an AI-native onboarding process to reduce typical two-month SDK and taxonomy setup timelines to two or three hours.
- Core Plan provides 65% of enterprise-grade features, including cohort analysis, raw data export, and deep linking, while excluding complex agency management and multi-touch attribution tools.
Two & a Half GamersJun 2026
PocketGamer.biz27 min
The Rewarded Ads Strategy: Why Original Games Dedicates 30% of UA Budgets to This Channel
The rewarded advertising landscape in mobile gaming has evolved from a simple tool for driving short-term installs into a sophisticated, data-driven ecosystem essential for user acquisition and game discovery.
- Rewarded ads have evolved from simple install-driven models into a sophisticated, data-led channel that can deliver 4 to 5 times higher ARPDAU compared to traditional UA channels like Apple and Unity.
- Original Games allocates 30% of its monthly user acquisition budget to rewarded ads, leveraging cohort-based modeling to predict long-term player value and profitability.
- The rewarded ecosystem has shifted from a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to a strategy requiring granular user segmentation, balancing 'rewards hunters' who seek quick payouts with 'casual players' who provide long-term retention.
PocketGamer.bizJun 2026
Deconstructor of Fun52 min
TWIG #387: LiftOff IPO, Xbox pulls out the bangers, and The Simpsons take over Monopoly GO!
The mobile and console gaming sectors are currently defined by aggressive strategies to secure market share through high-budget intellectual property partnerships, platform-level pivots, and sophisticated data-driven advertising.
- Mobile publishers are increasingly leveraging high-profile IP integrations, such as the two-month Simpsons crossover in Monopoly GO!, to combat user churn and drive retention in a saturated market.
- The IPO of Liftoff highlights the growing reliance on AI-driven optimization tools like the Cortex engine to scale user acquisition, despite significant competitive pressure from established firms like AppLovin and concerns over high debt levels.
- Xbox is recalibrating its console strategy by prioritizing platform exclusivity and ecosystem reinvestment to challenge Sony and Nintendo, shifting focus away from traditional margin requirements.
Deconstructor of FunJun 2026
Two & a Half Gamers34 min
🎮 The 3 Rewarded UA Personas: Reward Hunter, Casual, Gambler. How TyrAds Segments for Profit
Rewarded user acquisition has evolved into a sophisticated, data-driven sector that currently commands approximately 30% of total advertising budgets.
- Rewarded user acquisition now accounts for approximately 30% of total advertising budgets in the gaming industry.
- Modern platforms are shifting from manual optimization to fully automated, ROAS-based models that prioritize long-term LTV curves between day-7 and day-30.
- AI-driven user labeling categorizes traffic into three distinct personas—reward hunters, casual social users, and gamblers—to prevent ROI erosion from over-reliance on high-cost gambler segments.
Two & a Half GamersJun 2026
Deconstructor of Fun15 min
Match Masters' Secret Growth Engine? Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has evolved from a peripheral experimental tactic into a core, permanent growth pillar for mobile gaming studios.
- Influencer marketing acts as a core growth engine that can drive up to 30% growth in organic installs by leveraging creator-led trust to attract higher-quality, more engaged users.
- Short-term attribution models significantly undervalue creator partnerships, as influencer-driven installs can continue to accrue for over a year, with some campaigns seeing a 50% increase in attributed installs by day 365.
- Influencer activity creates a positive feedback loop where install spikes improve app store rankings, which subsequently fuels further organic discovery and stabilizes daily active users.
Deconstructor of FunJun 2026
Two & a Half Gamers38 min
💰 Block Out by Grand Games: $300K/Day on iOS Alone & It's About to Overtake Magic Sort
Grand Games has established a dominant position in the mobile puzzle market with the release of Block Out, a deterministic sort puzzler that currently generates $300,000 in daily revenue on iOS.
- Grand Games' title 'Block Out' is generating $300,000 in daily revenue on iOS, positioning it to surpass the studio's previous flagship game, 'Magic Sort'.
- The studio's growth strategy centers on refining proven puzzle mechanics rather than radical innovation, prioritizing accessibility and polish to lower the barrier to entry compared to competitors like 'Color Block Jam'.
- The game’s user acquisition pipeline is driven by high-volume creative testing, featuring over 1,000 unique creatives and 260 playable ads.
Two & a Half GamersJun 2026
Two & a Half Gamers8 min
🚨📢 BREAKING NEWS: $3.83B Liftoff, 20% Minigames, $28M UA Financing and Supercell!
The mobile gaming industry is currently undergoing a significant consolidation centered on scale, capital access, and live-ops strategies.
- Liftoff’s recent Nasdaq listing at a $3.83 billion valuation, 25% below its $5 billion target, indicates that public investors are prioritizing balance-sheet stabilization over aggressive growth for mobile ad-tech.
- Minigames now represent nearly 20% of mobile game spending in China, a model expected to influence Western markets within 18 months as playable-ad ecosystems prioritize instant play and reduced friction.
- The industry is shifting toward an event-first product philosophy, where UA success relies on aggressive content calendars and IP crossovers rather than evergreen messaging.
Two & a Half GamersJun 2026
Two & a Half Gamers22 min
🎮 Inside the Mistplay × MyChips Deal: The Rewarded UA consolidation has started! (MAU VEGAS 26)
Mistplay’s acquisition of MyChips marks a significant consolidation in the rewarded user acquisition (UA) industry, aiming to establish an undisputed market leader by 2027.
- Mistplay acquired MyChips to consolidate the rewarded user acquisition market, with the goal of establishing an undisputed industry leader by 2027.
- The integration unifies the Mistplay Audience Network with MyChips and Connected Rewards, allowing advertisers to distribute spend across a global publisher network without requiring new tracking infrastructure.
- The combined entity leverages APAC as a high-performance benchmark, where cultural familiarity with loyalty systems drives day-one retention rates as high as 80%.
Two & a Half GamersJun 2026
Two & a Half Gamers22 min
🎯 How to scale influencer marketing to 8 figures systems across 15 Studios by Marion Balinoff
Influencer marketing functions most effectively as a continuous, data-driven system rather than a series of isolated campaigns.
- Custom in-game integrations, such as reskinning items or full-funnel creator experiences, drive a 437% increase in conversion rates and a 279% increase in ROI.
- Influencer marketing should be managed as a continuous, data-driven testing framework rather than isolated campaigns to reach eight-figure scale.
- A content vertical is only considered viable for scaling once it achieves a 30% profitability rate and a minimum of 500,000 views.
Two & a Half GamersJun 2026
Deconstructor of Fun47 min
Match Masters' Influencer Marketing Playbook: 8 Years of Always-On Growth
Sustainable growth in the mobile gaming industry requires transitioning influencer marketing from an experimental tactic into a permanent, always-on pillar of the acquisition strategy.
- Transitioning influencer marketing from an experimental tactic to an always-on strategy is critical, as abandoning these programs can accelerate install declines by nearly threefold.
- Deploying a blitz approach, where multiple creators publish content simultaneously, triggers organic uplift and improves App Store rankings while enhancing the efficiency of paid user acquisition.
- Influencer marketing functions as a 'brandformance' tool, attracting higher-intent users who demonstrate superior retention rates compared to those acquired through traditional paid media.
Deconstructor of FunJun 2026
Two & a Half Gamers31 min
💰Marble Sort Review: SORT FTW! Voodoo is suddenly doing $1M/day in IAP revenue
Voodoo has achieved a major financial milestone in 2026, reaching $1 million in daily in-app purchase revenue across its portfolio.
- Voodoo reached $1 million in daily in-app purchase revenue in 2026, driven primarily by the puzzle game Marble Sort.
- The company is executing a strategic pivot from hyper-casual models to hybrid-casual mechanics that prioritize long-term player retention and direct user spending.
- Marble Sort utilizes a data-driven design approach, tracking granular metrics like attempts-per-success and booster-usage rates to maintain engagement without complex live operations.
Two & a Half GamersJun 2026