Last year, the genre of hyper-casual games experienced its heyday. Omer Kaplan, co-founder of ironSource, told about what supported the growth of hyper-casual and whether it will continue.
App2Top made a squeeze from Kaplan’s material on VentureBeat.
The ironSource platform estimated the hyper-casual games market at $2-2.5 billion. Last year’s market growth for hyper-casual was unprecedented.
Reasons for growth
The first of them is demographic.
There are more and more casual players. Kaplan refers to them most of the age and female audience. According to the EEDAR report, 30% of gamers are over 45 years old. In addition, the proportion of women among the players is 55%.
Plus, hyper-casual correlates well with the desire of mobile gamers to play in multitasking mode. EEDAR data shows that people more often prefer short gaming sessions on smartphones and tablets. For example, they play and simultaneously do household chores, take a bath or ride public transport.
The second reason for the growth of hyper-casual is the transition of hyper—casual publishers from cross-promotion to large-scale UA as the main strategy for attracting players.
According to Kaplan, advertising brings more and more profit to the creators of hyper-casual titles, their ARPU is growing. In this regard, developers are offering increasingly competitive prices in the UA market.
Forecast for 2019
This year, mobile developers of other genres, as well as advertisers, will be able to benefit from the heyday of hyper-casual, Kaplan is sure. The genre benefits the industry as a whole. It attracts a new audience. Over time, it moves to more complex genres, where the main source of monetization is not advertising, but in—game purchases. According to ironSource, 20% of hyper-casual players do just that.
Plus, the hyper-casual audience installs 10 times more different applications than fans of midcore games, puzzles, runners and social casinos. Accordingly, hyper-casual players see ads more often. This makes them especially valuable for the market and advertisers.
But there is a nuance.
60% of the advertising inventory in hyper-casual games belongs to hyper—casual advertisers. For example, it advertises other hyper-casual titles or games from the same publisher. This makes the hyper-casual economy more stable. But the income does not go to adjacent markets and genres, respectively.
Advertising of games of other genres with an emphasis on in-game purchases accounts for 33% of the advertising inventory. In order for developers of casual and other games to be able to earn more on hyper-casual this year, they need to better study its audience. And for this, Kaplan advises, authors need to improve the creative component of their titles and other things that attract players in hyper-casual.
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