We continue to summarize the results of 2025 with gaming (or gaming-related) companies. Up next is an interview with Daina Levchenko, Head of Product at Apptica.
How was the year 2025 for your analytics service? What would you say are the main results or achievements?
The year 2025 was indeed successful for us and arguably one of the most productive in recent times. We focused not on flashy launches, but on developing the product in areas where the market had a real need for data.
One of the key achievements was the expansion of our data sources, including the launch of creative analytics from RuStore. There was a clear demand for this information in the market, and now Apptica remains the only service that parses these creatives and provides analytics on them. Simultaneously, we significantly increased the volume of advertising data for Yandex and VK networks, and expanded our pool of advertisers, providing users with a more comprehensive view of actual advertising activity in mobile games.
Additionally, throughout the year, we improved the quality of key metrics: we became more precise in calculating downloads and revenue, added MAU in Usage Intelligence, expanded supported geographies, and continued to refine the interface to make it more convenient for everyday analytical work. Overall, the year laid a good foundation for further growth and development of the service.
How has the mobile gaming market changed over the year—in terms of audience, monetization, genres, and user behavior?
Over the past year, the mobile gaming market has become noticeably more mature and pragmatic. In terms of audience, we are seeing less growth outward and more consolidation around strong projects: users are more frequently choosing trusted titles and are less likely to download new games just to try them out.
In monetization, the market continues to move away from a strict division between IAP and ads—the hybrid approach has become the norm for most segments, including casual and mid-core projects, which is well reflected in the final indicators.
From the genre perspective, the blurring of boundaries continues: there is growing interest in games that combine casual and deeper mechanics, including hybrid-casual formats. We see that this segment is in stable demand in the market, and for us, it’s one of the directions for further development of analytics.
How have the analytics demands of gaming companies changed? In which directions has the demand grown the most?
The analytics demands of gaming companies have noticeably shifted over the last year from basic descriptive metrics to more applied and forward-looking ones. Whereas studios used to be satisfied with understanding installation volumes, RPD, and the general dynamics of key metrics, they now increasingly ask not "what happened," but "how to use it going forward." The growing interest in more detailed dynamic advertising effectiveness analytics—by traffic sources, formats, and creatives—as well as tools that allow benchmarking against the market and competitors is particularly noticeable. We see a steady demand for predictive and scenario metrics. This is precisely the direction where the market expects analytical services to evolve, including Apptica—as a tool that helps not only record facts but also make more informed decisions.
Which methods of analysis and forecasting proved to be the most effective this year? What has stopped yielding results?
In 2025, it became especially noticeable that a more in-depth analysis of specific cases and individual market situations provides far more practical benefits than attempts to rely on a generalized market picture. Universal approaches and averaged models are less able to reflect the reality where mobile games compete for user attention in very narrow niches. In this context, approaches based on average benchmarks and the "overall market" have been losing effectiveness. Average values by genres or countries provide too vague a picture of what is happening, especially in advertising, where the difference between two creatives within the same project can be significantly more important than differences between genres or categories as a whole.
What conclusions from 2025 could benefit studios planning to grow and scale in 2026?
The main conclusion for studios planning to grow in 2026 is that scaling no longer works without deep analytics and discipline. Growth is now built not on sharply increasing budgets but on a precise understanding of which players, from which channels, and with what mechanics truly create long-term value. Additionally, it has become clear that a live approach and continuous work with content and events is not an option but a necessity if a studio wants to retain the audience and effectively monetize through ads and IAP simultaneously.
What new trends do you expect in gaming analytics, data, and tools in 2026?
Most likely, there will be an increased interest in a more detailed and large-scale analysis of advertising creatives, including the use of AI approaches. The market is already moving towards automation—studios want to quickly understand which visual and thematic elements in creatives work and do so not manually but through large datasets. There will be growing demand for tools that help automatically classify, compare, and identify effective creative patterns, especially in conditions of high competition and constant updates to advertising materials. Overall, analytics is increasingly shifting from point manual analysis to systematic, automated analysis of creatives as a key driver of growth in mobile games.
What improvements in the service do you plan to implement in 2026?
In 2026, we plan to continue evolving the service organically, without abrupt changes, focusing on the quality and completeness of data. Primarily, this involves further scaling up—both in terms of the market as a whole and individual ad networks and advertisers. For an analytics service, this remains one of the key values, because it is the scale of data that allows for more accurate and representative conclusions.
Simultaneously, we will continue to "polish" existing metrics: enhance the accuracy of calculations, improve data comparability across countries and segments, and make the reports themselves more convenient for regular use. A separate focus will be expanding supported geographies and connecting new ad networks, which our clients regularly request. Overall, the goal for 2026 is to make Apptica an even more reliable and flexible tool for analyzing the mobile games market and advertising.