Two & a Half Gamers
Two & a Half Gamers is a YouTube channel covering the mobile games business. It publishes videos on ad monetization, user acquisition, game launches, studio strategies and industry news.
Documents
How to Set Up Meta AdROAS Campaigns: Step-by-Step Guide for UA Teams
Meta’s AdROAS (Ad Return on Ad Spend) campaigns represent a significant shift in user acquisition for ad-monetized mobile applications, allowing marketers to optimize directly for ad revenue value rather than relying on proxy events like retention or engagement.
- Meta AdROAS optimization allows mobile apps to bid directly on ad revenue value, replacing previous workarounds that required passing ad revenue as fake purchase events.
- The feature is currently available exclusively for Android campaigns as of Q4 2024, with iOS support expected in the future.
- To unlock AdROAS, an app must record at least 15 attributed ad impression events with distinct values from Facebook-acquired users within a 28-day window.
💰 $400 MIL/Year Genesis: Like Voodoo, but for apps and bigger. App industry’s secret blueprint
Genesis functions as a highly efficient venture builder that has transformed the non-gaming mobile application landscape into a multi-hundred-million-dollar industry.
- Genesis operates as a venture builder that co-founds and scales mobile apps, achieving over $35 million in monthly revenue and 400 million total downloads through a model that provides seed capital, mentorship, and shared services in exchange for equity.
- The micro-learning app Headway, launched in 2019, utilized gamification mechanics like streaks and quests to surpass its primary competitor, Blinkist, reaching 40 million downloads within two years.
- Genesis significantly increases profit margins by driving users to web-based subscription checkouts, allowing them to bypass the 30% platform fee and capture an estimated 50–60% of revenue off-app stores.
Ad Monetization Secrets: Top Mobile Games Printing $$$ in 2025
The mobile gaming landscape in 2025 is defined by a shift toward high-volume ad monetization, where studios prioritize rapid iteration and aggressive ad placement to capture global market share.
- Vietnamese studios like ABI Games are achieving high-scale monetization by utilizing template-based development, where proven game mechanics are rapidly reskinned to target low-CPI markets before expanding to Tier 1 geographies.
- Top-performing titles in the current market, such as 'Dreamy Rooms,' can generate up to $78,000 per day in combined ad and in-app purchase (IAP) revenue by leveraging decorative trends and ultra-casual engagement loops.
- Hyper-casual and hybrid-casual games are increasingly shifting away from misleading 'fake' gameplay ads toward real engagement loops that prioritize high-frequency interstitial ads, sometimes reaching 10 ads per daily active user.
How Chess.com became a $500M Business?
Chess.com has successfully transformed from a niche web portal into a dominant global platform, currently generating over $100 million in annual revenue with a valuation reaching $500 million.
- Chess.com has achieved a $500 million valuation and over $100 million in annual revenue by prioritizing a subscription-based model over aggressive advertising.
- The platform maintains a dominant market position with 200 million monthly web visits and a workforce of over 650 employees.
- Growth is driven by organic community engagement and strategic content rather than traditional paid user acquisition, bolstered by external catalysts like the COVID-19 pandemic and 'The Queen’s Gambit'.
Web Shops make up 30% of game revenue in 2025. Here’s how to build yours!
Mobile game developers are increasingly shifting toward direct-to-consumer web shops as a primary strategy to improve profitability and reclaim control over the player experience.
- Top mobile publishers are now generating 25–30% of their total revenue through direct-to-consumer web shops, bypassing traditional app store ecosystems.
- Operating an off-store web shop allows developers to reduce platform fees by approximately 50% compared to standard Apple or Google IAP rates.
- Successful web shop implementation requires a shift in UA strategy from simple CPI-chasing to training marketing teams to drive traffic directly to owned digital storefronts.
The Secret Sauce Behind $30M/Month Mobile Hits 🧪 Creative trends in Mobile Games - March 2025
Mobile game developers are currently sustaining massive monthly revenues by prioritizing iterative creative strategies over original gameplay innovation.
- Established mobile games are achieving all-time high revenue by recycling 5-year-old concepts and enhancing them with AI-generated visuals and animations.
- Games like Golden Goblins are hitting record revenue spikes, such as $230k in a single event, by leveraging long-standing gameplay loops.
- Creative strategies centered on 'near-death experiences' and high-stakes drama—such as characters in saunas or burning houses—are currently driving high performance in UA campaigns.
How to Unlock Hidden Ad Revenue in Google AdMob. Step-by-Step Walkthrough by Felix Braberg
This guide provides a comprehensive walkthrough for optimizing ad revenue within Google AdMob, a long-standing mediation platform in the mobile gaming industry.
- Consolidate ad units by creating one single unit for all rewarded ads, one for all interstitials, and one for all banners to avoid excessive manual mapping and configuration time.
- For games earning between $0 and $500 per day, prioritize integrating Meta (Android), Mintegral, Unity, Liftoff, and Digital Turbine as the primary ad networks within your mediation groups.
- Perform a 'share of revenue' analysis every 30 days by calculating the percentage of earnings per waterfall instance to identify underperforming price points.
🎮 Kingshot's Insane Genre Mix Explained! How Century Games’ New 4X Hooks Players & Payers
Kingshot represents a strategic evolution in the mobile 4X landscape, functioning as a hybrid title that integrates idle survival mechanics, tower defense elements, and Archero-style combat into a traditional alliance-based meta-game.
- Century Games has adopted a standardized 'template' strategy for Kingshot, essentially re-skinning the successful survival-city-builder mechanics of Whiteout Survival and Frozen City by layering them onto a 4X strategy framework.
- The core gameplay loop of Kingshot combines idle survival mechanics, such as resource management and base building, with traditional 4X alliance warfare and hero-based gacha progression.
- Kingshot utilizes aggressive user acquisition tactics, including fake gameplay mini-games and AI-generated character assets, to mirror successful creative trends observed in other top-performing mobile titles.
Your ads are boring! 5 Inspiration Tricks to Ignite Your Creative Strategy by Matej Lancaric
Effective creative strategy in the mobile gaming industry centers on the ability to evoke strong emotions to drive user acquisition and lower cost-per-install (CPI) metrics.
- Creative strategy in mobile gaming has shifted from Forex-style ads to casual and puzzle-based mechanics, with a primary focus on driving user engagement through emotional triggers like near-death experiences or satisfying ASMR-style interactions.
- To identify high-performing creatives, monitor competitor spend using tools like Adscan.ai, Facebook Ad Library, TikTok Ad Library, and Google Ads Transparency Center, as the highest-spending creative is typically the best-performing one.
- Cross-pollinate creative concepts by looking outside your specific genre; for example, adapt hyper-casual mechanics (like gates or sorting) or e-commerce and app-space trends to fit your game's audience.
Screwdom 3D Is PRINTING MONEY! 💸 Vietnam’s Game Devs Just Raised the Bar
Screwdom 3D represents a significant evolution in the hybrid-casual gaming landscape, demonstrating how Vietnamese developers are successfully scaling sophisticated puzzle titles.
- Screwdom 3D is a hybrid-casual title generating approximately $3.6 million in monthly revenue, split roughly 40% from in-app purchases (IAP) and 60% from ad revenue.
- The game utilizes a physics-based core mechanic where players must manipulate and 'wiggle' 3D objects to clear levels, drawing design inspiration from titles like Screw Jam and Pinout Master.
- Despite being in a scaling phase with limited penetration in the US market, the game is achieving significant traction in Tier 2, 3, and 4 countries, with daily IAP revenue reaching approximately $200,000.
Top Girl meets Last War! Last Z: Survival Shooter review
Last Z: Survival Shooter represents a significant evolution in the mobile 4X strategy genre, functioning as a hybrid model that merges the established mechanics of titles like Last War: Survival with highly suggestive, character-driven engagement loops.
- Last Z: Survival Shooter is a new 4X mobile title from the developers of Last War: Survival, currently scaling to approximately $300,000 in daily revenue with 50% of earnings originating from the U.S. market.
- The game utilizes a proven 4X template established by Last War: Survival and Dark War, focusing on optimized onboarding sequences and high-retention mechanics to lower User Acquisition (UA) costs.
- Developers are aggressively integrating 'waifu' and AI-generated character tropes, including an 'OnlyFans-style' chat and image system that monetizes user interaction through energy consumption and per-message fees.
Mastering Effective Spend Depth in Gaming by Jakub Remiar
Effective spend depth is a critical metric for game designers and developers to understand, as it represents the specific resources required for a player to access and complete end-game content.
- Spend depth is the total monetary value required to acquire every upgradeable asset in a game, while effective spend depth represents the specific resources needed to access and complete end-game content.
- To calculate spend depth, anchor the game's economy to real-world currency by analyzing the cost of hard currency bundles and the total shard or resource requirements to max out all items.
- Effective spend depth is often lower than total spend depth because players typically focus on optimizing a specific loadout, such as the eight cards used in a Clash Royale deck, rather than maxing every available asset.