Data Report | What new trends in mobile games are worth attention in 2024?
Although 2023 saw economic downturns and a tightening market, mobile games can fine-tune their products and operations, accumulating strength and seeking steady progress.
To help developers fully understand the overall market trends in 2023, TradPlus collaborates with SocialPeta to launch the "2023 Global Mobile Game Marketing and Monetization Report". Through benchmarking the industry performance, we hope to help developers find directions for further optimization of user acquisition and ad monetization.
In 2023, the global mobile games download and revenue both showed some contraction. The overall download fell by 12% year-on-year, and the revenue also had a small decrease of 4%. Almost no market or genre was spared. However, there are cases where a single game's revenue increases, mainly because users prefer spending time on a few games rather than exploring more choices.
The Russian market has become the next rising star following Southeast Asia. The Russian market performed well overall in 2023. Although it was affected by the political environment, as the situation stabilized, the entry of new players also brought new norms. Russia's overall eCPM rose quickly, surpassing Southeast Asia to take the leading position in emerging markets. Half of the overall market share comes from Casual Games, and other mid-core games such as RPG, Arcade, and Action are also on the list, which closely reflected the audience's preferences.
Simulation games implementing both IAP and IAA business models show excellent performance and have further growth opportunities. Simulation games are diverse in game scenes and mechanisms. Therefore, their performance in retention and LTV is quite impressive, which is higher than Casual, Card, Puzzle, Action and other genres. Also, due to the diverse ad scenes, different ad types can be more easily blended in. Rewarded video, interstitial, and splash all have a higher revenue contribution.
The performance of Simulation in Southeast Asia is also worth noting, with rewarded video reaching $10.12; at the same time, the download in Southeast Asia is also higher, surpassing North America and South America, bringing better advertising revenue.
In the report, SocialPeta also provides a detailed interpretation of the media buying performance of major global markets and game genres:
Mobile games media buying still rank the highest in the United States. In 2023, the average monthly number of mobile game advertisers in the United States exceeded 26,000, far ahead of other countries/regions. Among them, the Android side has an absolute dominant position in America, with an advertiser share of over 70%, and a creative volume share of over 68%.
RPG is undoubtedly the most eye-catching genre of the year. The average monthly number of RPG advertisers in all regions is around 1,400, and the monthly mix of new RPG creatives exceeds 35%. Among them, the RPG creatives upgrade in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan regions is the fastest, with a monthly new creatives mix of over 46%.
For more insights, please download the "2023 Global Mobile Game Marketing and Monetization Report".
