AppsFlyer shared the report for the gaming marketing in 2023 and Unity delivered a report about the gaming market in 2023 in general. data.ai tracked a surge in Brazil, Mexico, and LATAM in 2022.
This week:
- data.ai: Mobile Gaming Markets of Brazil, Mexico & LATAM, in general, grew in 2022
- Among Us reached 500M downloads on Mobile
- AppsFlyer: State of Mobile Gaming Marketing in 2023
- Unity: Gaming industry in 2023
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data.ai: Mobile Gaming Markets of Brazil, Mexico & LATAM, in general, grew in 2022
- Mobile revenue in Brazil grew by 2022 by 20% – from $1.13B in 2021 to $1.37B in 2022.
- Mexico also showed a growth of almost 20%, and the overall revenue of the mobile market in the country reached $711M.
- Brazil’s mobile gaming market grew by 12.3% YoY – from $570M in 2021 to $640M in 2022.
- The Mexican mobile gaming market showing good results too with a growth of 9.4% from $320M to $350M.
- It’s important to note that the global mobile gaming market in 2022 dropped by 5%. This means that Brazil and Mexico are growing despite world downward trends.
- Countries are growing by downloads too – Brazil reached 4.62B downloads; Mexico – 2.42B downloads.
- Shooters are the most lucrative genre in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. Overall revenue growth of shooter games revenue in those countries reached 24%. This is interesting because shooters are the largest losers of 2022 worldwide.
- Brazil has also seen an increase in party games revenue by 78%. data.ai tracks Stumble Guys in this category, so it might be an effect of one title.
Among Us reached 500M downloads on Mobile
- Among Us was released on App Store & Google Play in 2018. But before Q3 2020 the game wasn’t popular at all.
- After the game became viral, in Q4 2020 its downloads reached 230M – only on Mobile.
- A majority of downloads came from the US, Brazil, and India.
- Developers earned $91.7M on mobile devices since launch. Which is a great result for a team of 14 people.
AppsFlyer: State of Mobile Gaming Marketing in 2023
The data was collected from January 2021 to December 2022. 38B installs were counted; 18.6k thousand apps with not less than 10k quarter installs participated; $13.9B of spend was considered.
General numbers
- $26.7B was spent on mobile gaming ads in 2022. The US market is the first with $12.2B of spend. Japan is second with about $2B spent.
- Android downloads increased by 8% worldwide. iOS downloads dropped by 5%.
- In the US Android downloads increased by 19%; iOS downloads decreased by 1%.
- An average CPI on iOS increased by 88% when comparing Q1 2022 with Q4 2022 and reached $3.75.
- IAP dropped by 7% in H2 2022 compared to H1 2022. iOS payments declined by 13% (-1% YoY); Android – by 6% (-14% YoY). The decline is caused by the revenue drop of RPG and casino games.
World trends
- The speed of iOS downloads declining in 2022 slowed down, but the trend is still negative. Android downloads growth is slowing too.
- Casino (+17% YoY) and RPG (+11%) downloads grew on iOS in 2022. On Android casino games were 48% more popular – it’s the fastest-growing genre on the platform overcoming the hypercasual games 3x times. Users from India, Brazil, and Turkey drove such dramatic growth.
- The number of paid downloads on Android increased by 16% YoY. In spite of difficulties, iOS paid downloads increased by 10%. However, it’s important to note that iOS paid downloads have been declining throughout 2022.
- A lot of countries in Southeast Asia showed an overall growth in downloads. China (-30%), Russia (-30%), Mexico (-31%) – are the largest losers by downloads on iOS. Russian Android downloads also decreased by 27%.
- Match games (19%), hypercasual games (14%), and RPGs (11%) are responsible for almost half of the ad budget worldwide.
- Ad monetization has been decreasing throughout 2022.
- The impact of self-owned marketing instruments (push notifications; in-app messages; cross-promo) increased by 16% on iOS and 34% on Android.
Trends by genre
- Hypercasual – CPI is decreasing; the number of downloads from India increased by 32% in 2022.
- Match – CPI is growing on both iOS ($5.74 in Q4 2022) and Android ($1.45 in Q4 2022); China dropped by 41% in downloads on iOS.
- Casino – CPI on iOS reached $11.45 in Q4 2022; ad revenues declined by 33% on iOS and 29% on Android; downloads in the US are growing.
- RPG – downloads in the US grew by 90% YoY on iOS and 41% YoY on Android; despite such a growth – IAP and ad monetization declined; however ad spending on games of this genre is increasing.
- Simulation – paid downloads on Android increased by 33%; IAP revenue is declining on both iOS and Android; in the US downloads dropped by 28% on Android but grew by 1% on iOS.
- Puzzle – Android ad spending increased by 52% and iOS ad spending increased by 37%; CPI on iOS dropped to $3, on Android – contrary – it grew up to $3; CPI in India is less than $0.1.
General conclusions
- Hybrid monetization is the key.
- AppsFlyer is positive that the right usage of SKAN 4.0 will help to work more efficiently on the iOS market.
- The US is being the main market, but AppsFlyer suggests paying attention to growing markets like Indonesia, India, or Vietnam.
- Remarketing on Android is still working.
- The right thing to do is to scale your own marketing channels.
- Mobile games are turning more to community marketing. Players are reading Twitter, chatting in Discord, watching Twitch. And, of course, discussing their favorite games.
The full version of the report
Unity: Gaming industry in 2023
Trends
1. Indie developers started to release games faster. 62% of them are releasing a game in less than a year.
- Developers in small (10-49 people) and mid-size (50-299) studios started to spend fewer hours on game development. On the contrary, indie developers and large companies’ hours spent on a game continued to increase.
2. Competition in the mobile market is increasing. The number of mobile games from large studios in 2022 increased by 44%.
- The only category that started to do fewer mobile games is a studio with a headcount of 10 to 49 people.
- The number of new builds in 2022 increased by 15.7%.
- Kazakhstan experienced a surge in indie developers by 115.7%. Romania (+85.2%) and Poland (+82.1%) are among the leaders too.
- The number of mid-sized studios in Turkey increased by 260%; in Norway by 200%; in France by 196%.
3. Large studios increased the development of multi-platform games. In 2022 the number of cross-platform increased by 16%.
- 85% of studios with a headcount of more than 50 people are working on a cross-platform title.
4. Users are playing mobile games more than in 2021. The world DAU in games on average increased by 8%.
- However, people started to pay less. The number of payers declined by 2%. More people began to prefer ads to IAP.
- The majority of mobile users do prefer IAP and ad monetization. Subscriptions are much less favored.
- Unity shared the benchmark of IAP/Ad Revenue distribution by genres. Interesting that Word games in 2022 have experienced an increase of ad monetization share by 48.7%; IAP share in sports games increased by 15.14%.
- In the current market, only 0.5% of DAU (or less) are making purchases in a day.
- Games that are into the 90 percentile by revenue (games earning more than 90% of games on the market) are showing the following Retention metrics in Tier-1 countries: D1 Retention – 35.4%; D7 Retention – 14.3%; D30 Retention – 6.1%.
- Unity found a correlation between ads (mostly Rewarded Ads) and Retention. It’s higher in games with ads.
- 70% of developers are creating monetization mechanics basis on the first 30 days of development.
5. Companies started to work more on retention. In 2022 the lifecycle of mobile games increased by 33%.
- 49% of mid-size studios perceive Retention as the main trouble.
- Battle Pass is the most popular monetization mechanic of 2022. Its usage increased by 27%. Gacha became less popular overall.
