Hybrid casual mobile games will get hotter in 2024 says Mintegral
Wednesday, December 20, 2023 by Richard Harris
In the evolving mobile gaming landscape, the hottest trend is hybrid-casual games, where downloads grew by 13% and revenues reached $1.4 billion in 2022.
Hybrid-casual fills a need between hyper-casual games, usually free-to-play games with simple gaming mechanisms, and mid-core games, which customers purchase to play and are rewarded with intricate gameplay and ...
Leveraging connectivity and integration to access new audiences
Tuesday, November 9, 2021 by Daniel Twigg
The need for interconnectivity
Businesses require a wide range of applications across departments to run effectively, and interconnectivity between these applications is becoming more desirable as businesses seek to drive increased efficiencies out of their systems and their staff. Application providers can capitalize on this need for interconnectivity by solving the...
In game advertising extends beyond casual games
Tuesday, December 31, 2019 by Freeman Lightner
The fifth annual In-Game Advertising Study by deep-data analytics and player management company, deltaDNA, finds that 94% of Free-to-Play (F2P) games now feature some form of in-game advertising (up from 87% in 2018). While the number of developers making between 40-100% of their revenue from ads has increased by 21% year on year.
The study, which is based...
How game developers can drive more revenue
Monday, September 23, 2019 by Offer Yehudai
Game developers tend to follow standard templates for monetizing their apps. Mid-core publishers focus on IAP and time-gated ads to be shown at a later date, usually based on their studios' recommendation. Meanwhile, hyper-casual ones go all-in on advertising, while casual games fall somewhere in between. These default strategies leave money on the table b...
Twitter teams up with MoPub
Thursday, May 30, 2019 by Brittany Hainzinger
Back in March, Twitter shared how MoPub’s impression-level revenue data will enable mobile app publishers to understand true ads lifetime value (LTV) of users, which allows UA teams to better optimize paid user acquisition. Now, we’re extremely excited to announce the offering of this mission-critical solution to our full-platform publishers. Publishers will...
Mobile app profitability and user LTV
Tuesday, May 28, 2019 by Alon Golan
According to a recent survey, mobile advertising and app marketing practitioners believe that more and more advertisers will focus on actual profitability this year and move away from the exhausting what-ever-it-takes growth strategy.
Profitability is a rallying cry I hear almost daily from mobile app publishers, and it begins with user acquisition campaigns. If ther...
Hothead games wants to make your mobile game a hit too
Thursday, January 24, 2019 by Richard Harris
Hothead Games announced that it has launched a new publishing division to help third-party game developers turn their mobile games into hits. The company is currently accepting submissions and offering financial assistance for games in various stages of development that will benefit from Hothead’s expertise in analytics, marketing, monetization, and gameplay mecha...
New app marketing tool gets smart about user acquisition
Tuesday, December 18, 2018 by Richard Harris
Mobile monetization and marketing company ironSource has announced the launch of its ROAS (return on their advertising spend), Optimizer tool. The new tool enables user acquisition managers to automatically bid on dynamic CPI (cost-per-install) rates to reach the desired ROAS goal, solving one of the most painful challenges of user acquisition today of efficient and rea...
Unity Ads SDK 3.0 come to game developers
Wednesday, October 24, 2018 by Richard Harris
Unity has just launched the latest version of their Ads SDK, and it’s a doozy. The new Unity Ads SDK 3.0 introduces personalized placements, as well as two new ad formats: Augmented reality and Banner ads.
Personalized placements are particularly noteworthy. Now in open beta, personalized placements tie ads and in-app purchases into the same auction, serving th...
Measuring mobile ad revenue on the user level
Thursday, October 4, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
ironSource announced the launch of User Ad Revenue (UAR), a unique product giving app developers the ability to accurately measure ad revenue on the user level, and link that data to the marketing channel which brought in that specific user.
By revealing how much in-app advertising revenue each individual user generates across all networks, and attributing that reven...
Facebook announces inapp purchases for Instant Games
Tuesday, May 8, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
At Facebook's annual developer conference, F8, the company has announced that In-App Purchases (IAP) will be available on the Instant Games platform for developers to implement on Android and Facebook. Enabling IAP has always been on Facebook's roadmap for Instant Games, and it's a key part of helping developers be successful. For purchases made in web versions of Insta...
Are app store subscription models right for your app
Friday, October 6, 2017 by Mark Rosner
While advertising and in-app purchases are the methods of monetization app marketers are probably most familiar with, subscription-based models may be the most overlooked. But subscriptions offer publishers benefits like a predictable, long-term revenue stream, and higher average revenue per user (ARPU) versus ads or IAPs. Subscriptions can also be deeply engaging for u...
Apps with subscriptions should read this report about pricing
Thursday, August 17, 2017 by Richard Harris
Liftoff, a mobile app marketing and retargeting company, has released a report dedicated entirely to trends around subscription apps. The surprising data shows that setting subscription costs too low might actually lose otherwise-loyal app users. Additionally, the report looks into which price group converts users fastest, and highlights untapped potential in the male s...
Mobile rewarded ads help increase IAP spends shows study
Tuesday, August 1, 2017 by Richard Harris
Rewarded videos inside games and apps can be a double edge sword. Give "something" to a user for watching a video is a gamble because it's hard to decipher how users will react. It's an obvious thought to wonder if rewarded ads take revenue away from In-App Purchases (IAPs). But new data out today from Tapjoy shows that rewarded ads actually help increase IAP ...
Your Unite Europe 2017 keynote briefing
Monday, July 3, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
Unite Europe 2017, taking place in the beautiful city of Amsterdam, has just kicked off! Over the next two days, artists, developers, teachers, filmmakers, researchers, storytellers and anyone using Unity will come together to talk about what they love most - creating with Unity.The opening keynote has just concluded and several big announcements have came down the pipe...
Keeping your free to play games and apps profitable
Friday, April 21, 2017 by Richard Harris
Free-to-Play isn't a new concept, it's still a very popular business model for many software companies, game and enterprise alike. But although a F2P platform looks very attractive to prospective customers, the downside is the wager that is made on whether or not enough customers will make the leap to actually pay for the premium items on your platform. It's this consta...
Unity 5.6 is coming, what you need to know
Wednesday, March 1, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
Unity Technologies has announced at GDC that Unity 5.6 will release on March 31, 2017, marking the final installment of Unity 5. The company also provided an early look at Unity 2017, the next generation of Unity with version 2017.“The Unity 5 cycle culminating in 5.6 represents great progress in our key focus areas: graphics, performance, stability, efficiency and plat...
Being smart about competitor mobile ads could increase your eCPM
Monday, January 9, 2017 by Jan Pollack
You've worked hard to build a cool app with great user engagement, and a market for yourself, but you don't want someone else's poor ad or competitive call to action to mess that up, right? This concern causes some developers to keep advertising blacklist settings on auto-pilot, or avoid ads from competitors altogether, but that's a mistake - the odds a...
Unity and Xiaomi team up
Tuesday, November 29, 2016 by Richard Harris
Unity Technologies and Xiaomi have revealed additional details on the recent partnership agreement as both companies scale to serve consumers and developers worldwide. As one of the top Android device makers in China, Xiaomi boasts one of the world’s most engaged audiences, with the MIUI app store seeing more than 50 billion downloads to date. Unity developers will have...
Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite adds two new key ingredients
Thursday, October 27, 2016 by Richard Harris
Flurry Analytics has announced the availability of two advancements to the Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite, Crash Analytics 2.0 and Revenue Analytics.Crash Analytics provides developers information about application crashes, exceptions and errors log, all in real time. This functionality is vital for determining the root cause of any issues quickly, while keeping apps runn...
ironSource Launches Ad Engagement Intelligence to Help Improve Engagement
Friday, September 23, 2016 by Richard Harris
ironSource has released a major feature for its Mediation Platform, adding ‘User-level Analytics’, advanced ‘Frequency Capping,’ and ‘Delivery Pacing’ tools to their Ad Placement Technology. Developers will now have the ability to see in-depth user-level ad engagement, and make optimal placement and pacing customizations to impro...
Google Play, Mobile Ads and AdBlocking: The Macro View
Tuesday, July 19, 2016 by Janis Zech
Google quietly rolled out an update to the Play Store a few months ago, but the change sent ripples through the entire mobile developer community: the company started clearly labeling the apps that include ads. It’s a small change, but one that has greater implications for every participant in the mobile app ecosystem - from developers and end users, to mobile ad platfo...
DeltaDNA's New Service Aims to Help Drive Monetization in Low Player Games
Monday, March 14, 2016 by Richard Harris
deltaDNA just announced the release of SmartAds ‘On Demand’, a dynamic independent ad mediation and management platform developed specifically to drive monetization in games with low player numbers.Smaller games typically struggle from a lack of available performance data, which alongside the major time drain of managing multiple ad networks, makes the effective o...
deltaDNA Releases New SmartAds Mobile Game Ad Monetization Platform
Tuesday, July 28, 2015 by Richard Harris
deltaDNA has released the new SmartAds gaming ad management product which combines player targeting with dynamic ad mediation. The new platform combines in-app purchases (IAP), analytics and ad-serving with data derived from player experiences. It provides the ability to customize a player’s monetization experience by segmenting them into either ad responsive or IA...
Amazon Releases New Cross Platform Plugins for Unity, Adobe Air, and More
Wednesday, June 24, 2015 by Richard Harris
Amazon has developed a number of plugins for cross platform tools to allow mobile developers utilizing the Amazon platform to access Amazon Services without the need to write boilerplate code to bridge cross platform code with native language Amazon APIs. Amazon has recently released several new plugins for Apache Cordova, Unity, Adobe Air, and Xamarin to allow dev...
Windows and Windows Phone Store Trends for First Quarter 2015
Wednesday, April 22, 2015 by Richard Harris
Microsoft has released the latest Windows Store trends across categories, markets, and more for Q1 2015. Microsoft provides the quarterly analysis to help app developers understand general trends can help determine what types of apps to build or where to focus development efforts. Data from the Windows Store is presented alongside Windows Phone Stores.Windows and Window...
Amazon Updates Web App Starter Kit for Fire TV
Wednesday, April 8, 2015 by Richard Harris
Amazon’s Web App Starter Kit for Fire TV is an open source project intended to help developers get up to speed on creating simple media-oriented apps for the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. The Starter Kit provides a basic media app template that is designed for the 10-foot user experience and includes UI controls, support for the Fire TV remote, sample UI compon...
Gondola Platform Lets You Automate Variable Pricing for Virtual Goods and IAP’s
Sunday, April 5, 2015 by Richard Harris
Gondola has announced the launch of its Dynamic Pricing Engine which allows game developers to automate the pricing of virtual goods and in-app purchases (IAP). Gondola’s dynamic pricing technology leverages historical and real-time data to gain insights on user behavior. Its Dynamic Pricing Engine simultaneously runs millions of multivariate tests to fine-tune the...
Tapjoy Offers New App Marketing Automation and Monetization Platform
Friday, March 13, 2015 by Stuart Parkerson
Tapjoy has revamped its company and product solution with the launch of its new Marketing Automation and Monetization Platform, which is designed to help freemium mobile app publishers maximize the lifetime value of each user. The new platform combines predictive analytics, marketing automation, IAP driven monetization and Tapjoy’s rewarded advertising solutions. ...
Amazon Will Showcase How Game Developers Can Reach New Customers with Twitch at GDC
Monday, February 23, 2015 by Richard Harris
At GDC Amazon Will Showcase How Game Developers Can Reach New Customers with TwitchAmazon is diving deep into the GDC experience as it showcases its Twitch platform, Amazon Mobile Ads API, AWS, and the Amazon App Store. This year’s GDC will provide Amazon with a big opportunity to promote the Twitch live video-game-streaming service as an opportunity for game developers...
10 App Favorites for a Sane Thanksgiving
Monday, November 24, 2014 by Dale Carr
With Thanksgiving around the corner, we naturally got to thinking about spending time with friends and family this season. Rather than a bucolic postcard scene of gathered loved ones telling stories by the fireplace, our staff imagined a more modern and realistic version which includes quite a few of us checking our devices and enjoying some quality time with our ...
Fuse Powered Announces the Acquisition of Corona Labs Mobile Game and App Development Platform
Tuesday, November 4, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
Fuse Powered, a mobile monetization platform based in Canada, has announced that it has acquired Corona Labs and its mobile game and app development platform. All According to Walter Luh, CEO/Founder of Corona Labs, “Let me be crystal clear that Corona is not going away – quite the opposite. Everyone on the team (including me) is joining Fuse and we’ll continue to ...
Help Your Game Players Learn to Succeed with On the Job Training
Wednesday, June 11, 2014 by Richard Harris
Pay your players, or they will quit their jobs! It’s an interesting way of looking at how to keep gamers engaged and maximizing the long term value of each player.Niklas Herriger of Gondola proposes that developers take an approach that considers players as employees who play a game as their job. It’s an innovative way of approaching game monetization.In a recent blog&n...
Marmalade Announces Free SDK License with the Launch of Version 7.3
Monday, June 9, 2014 by Richard Harris
Marmalade Technologies is now offering a free license for their cross-platform SDK. Marmalade’s free SDK license enables developers to create apps and games for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows Store, BlackBerry and Tizen using a single codebase for native performance on any device. With the free license developers have access to Marmalade Quick, Marmalade Web ...
Spring Into Profit – The Four Money Making Models for Your Apps to Bloom
Wednesday, April 9, 2014 by Dale Carr
This Spring will no doubt inspire a new crop of budding mobile app developers possessing amazing ideas to improve our lives on the go. Developers, beware: the mobile app business is not for the faint-hearted. For one, it is a crowded marketplace, and competition to get apps discovered is fierce.
By now, the US market is reaching saturation and many mobile users alrea...
