Editor’s Note: this post was originally published by Joel Julkunen, Head of Game Analysis at GameRefinery. In his role, he leads GameRefinery’s analytics department and has a major role in developing algorithms and statistical models used in the company.  Since the early days of free to play mobile gaming, monetization has been the talk of the town. Resistance, reluctance and rage were common among mobile gamers as designers were trying to figure out this revolutionary business model and its mechanics. Today things have fortunately changed quite a bit, but getting monetization right still isn’t easy – far from it! In this post, GameRefinery takes a look at some of the recent macro trends in casual game IAP monetization. This short read should hopefully give you insights and inspiration to take your monetization to the next level. What Are Casual Games?...

Editor’s Note: this post was originally published by Kalle Heikkinen, Chief Game Analyst at GameRefinery. With over 400 game analysed under his belt, Kalle has a solid understanding of what works and what doesn’t in the mobile game market. No matter how you measure it, 2018 was the year when Battle Royale took us by storm. What got started in the modding scene of PC survival games such as H1Z1, DayZ and Rust, eventually developed into a global phenomenon including the likes of PUBG and Fortnite.  While these titles are fully-fledged classic examples of battle royale games, it has since then become apparent that with a pinch of creativity, it is possible to include a battle royale mode in a surprisingly wide array of different game genres. Using GameRefinery’s Market Explorer tool to make sense of the battle royale market. While just...

In an increasingly competitive mobile games market, developers and studios vying for greater user traffic to their titles must pay closer attention to their User Acquisition (UA) strategies. We’re seeing that even tried and tested processes that have gathered impressive numbers of new users in the past are now at risk of becoming ineffective. This is just as much due to overall market competition as it is to the increased automation and machine learning potential of platforms like Google and Facebook. Essentially, automatic optimization of mobile ad creatives has made it harder for titles to differentiate themselves from competitors. And there now remains only a few ways to truly stand out from the crowd. From recognising the importance of original concepts to testing different ad formats, we dig deep into what the best creative strategies are for advertising your mobile...

Editor’s Note: this post was originally published by Sunny Cha, VP of Marketing at Tenjin. Having worked in previous companies including Tapjoy, Animaco and Gaming Insiders, Sunny brings her extensive experience to the mobile industry. Mobile game publishing is undergoing a dramatic paradigm shift, and hyper casual games are at the center of it all. Characterized by their short engagement loops, low retention, and ad-based monetization, hyper casual titles represent a stark departure from the whale-driven, IAP-centric, tentpole economies traditionally found in the social casino and build & battle genres. This new publishing approach, which has allowed innovators like Voodoo to attract investor attention to the tune of an estimated $200 million, is the product of a disciplined, data-driven approach to growth. By unifying the traditionally disparate practices of user acquisition and mobile ad monetization, data scientists are constructing efficient growth engines to...

Wouldn’t it be awesome if your players spent money within your game all of the time? While building a community that spends actual currency in your game’s environment is certainly difficult, it’s not impossible. In-app purchases are a huge form of income for the mobile gaming world, and is only getting more and more popular. This chart from Statista shows just how comfortable users are becoming with making purchases on their mobile devices. The million dollar question every game developer is asking is ‘how can I take advantage of this?’ It all comes back to the game, and your data. By analyzing your users behavior you can better optimize your gameplay so not only will your users have a better experience, you’ll also be able to get them to perform your desired actions. Before you can do this however, you...

If you’re a game developer, chances are that you’re running some native ads. Or if not, you’re probably at least thinking about it, because properly done native ads can be incredibly successful and lucrative. However, there are a lot of reasons they are the next big thing in mobile advertising, so let’s dig into how you can best execute native advertising in your game(s). Let’s start by defining what a native ad actually is. Generally, a native ad is considered any type of digital ad that echoes or follows the form and function of the platform on which it appears. And in most cases, the value of a native is the fact that properly deployed, they don’t feel like ads at all. Which is why they can be so successful if they are carefully executed, tracked, and measured – and...

Editor’s note: this post was originally published by Nicolas Boulay on the Space Ape Games Tech blog. Nic has 10 years experience in mobile UA and ad-monetisation. He previously worked at Gameloft and Badoo and joined Space Ape in the early days of 2012.  About Fast Lane Fastlane has reached 16M installs, approaching $30M run rate, and is on an explosive growth trajectory 10 months after launch Fastlane is an evolved arcade shooter game available for free on iOS and Android phones From $5,000/d to $45,000/d from ads in 4 months: what are the lessons learnt from our holistic iterations and partnership with Unity Ads We are setting a new benchmark for ads at $0.13 ad arpdau in the US Our Ad LTV – lifetime value – is now based on true ad performance to gain accuracy We multiplied our User...

In November 2017, EA released Star Wars Battlefront II, developed by DICE studio. The company was met with extreme criticism after it seemed to have not learned from its mistakes with its season pass approach in the first instalment. Famously, EA’s response to that criticism led to the most downvoted comment in Reddit’s history. The reason EA’s response garnered so much negative attention was that it ignored the growing discontent over its use of loot boxes, an increasingly common monetisation strategy in the gaming industry. Though the strategy has been around for over a decade, the success of Blizzard’s Overwatch was a pivotal moment for the loot box model, vastly increasing its visibility and popularity. It has only been in the past few years that the public dialogue has broadened to include parallels to gambling, and whether or not there...

Ads are a part of daily life for pretty much everyone, and in most cases, we’re probably all pretty good at tuning them out. Whether it’s a TV commercial, a billboard, a banner ad on a website, or a pre-roll message on a video or podcast, the various ads that we’re bombarded with probably barely register for most of us, eventually causing ad blindness. While ad blindness might be a good thing in your personal life (who wants to view advertising on purpose, really?), it’s definitely not a good thing for game developers who rely on clicks and perhaps affiliate marketing as well. With that in mind, how do you optimize your ads for actual productive views and engagements, while keeping mobile ad blindness to a minimum? What Is Mobile Ad Blindness? Let’s start with understanding what ad blindness actually...

With any analytics dashboard, you’re going to get a lot of information, possibly more than you know what to do with. While all of it is valuable in its own way, you’re probably not going to be parsing every detail of each metric or stat on a daily basis, so you need to be aware of the stats that you should prioritise in order to maximise your game’s revenue – and maintain your own sanity! There are some metrics that you should know by heart, but for some they could prove to be a bit much to take a deep dive into on a daily basis. So without further adieu, these are the metrics you should prioritise if, like most game developers, you want to boost your game’s earning and revenue potential. 1 – Daily Active Users/DAU For your game...

To say that the gaming industry is large has become an understatement. For some perspective, the forecast for the number of cars sold worldwide in 2017 is 79.6 million, which brings the current estimate for the total number of cars on the road up to around 1.5 billion. Compare that with the current estimate for the total number of people who play video games: 2.2 billion. According to Newzoo’s latest Global Games Market Report, the global games market will have generated $108.9 billion of revenue in 2017. This is a 7.8% increase from the previous year, and is expected to rise to $128.5 billion in 2020. As we move into 2018, gaming is becoming less comparable with that of the film industry, and more with that of professional sports. However, regardless of size, bourgeoning industries come with obstacles, and gaming...

Microtransactions (or MTXs for short) are small purchases players make to unlock further gameplay, gain extra lives, change a character’s appearance, or speed up the gaming process in simulation games like The Tribez. The microtransaction business model has a strong right to exist on mobile; in a world where a Match-3 game costs up to $200,000 to develop and promote, even when they are often distributed for free, game studios are bound to find ways to make money from their hard work somehow. At the moment, over 90% of all mobile games use the freemium model; the apps are free to play (F2P) and incorporate various in-app purchases (IAPs). Although only 1.9% of players actually spend money on in-game content, they bring up to 90% of the total mobile game market revenue, which hit $46.1 billion in 2017. Last year...