It is most expensive to advertise mobile games in Canada and Australia, and not in the USA or Japan, according to experts from Chartboost, a cross-promotion company.
As the company found out, the highest price per installation (cost per install or simply CPI) is in Canada and Australia. Chartboost explains this by the widespread practice of so-called “soft launch” in these countries. The fact is that the users of Canada and Australia are very similar in their preferences and behavior to the users of the USA. At the same time, their markets are much smaller, the risks, respectively, too. Therefore, many developers publish their game in these countries before launching their game in the States. We can say they are testing before the main release, willingly spending on advertising. That’s why the high prices.
Chartboost also reports that in countries such as Japan, South Korea, China, the United Arab Emirates, Spain, Brazil, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Thailand, the CPI is always less than $1.50, and many, many large advertising companies pass by these countries only because of the widespread misconception that these markets are not monetized.
This is a curious study, as many developers claim that both Japan and South Korea are among the most profitable markets. In the last quarter alone, GREE reported net sales of $508.6 million, with the US market bringing in only $16.8 million of them.
Everything is fine in South Korea, too. Com2uS and Gamevil recently reported an explosive growth in their own revenues, most of which fell on the market native to both companies.
Chartboost also compared the world CPI prices with the world CPC prices (cost per click – cost per click). As a result, it turned out that the CPI price is very different from region to region, while the CPC is about the same.
The average price for installing an app on Android is 80% of the average price for installing on iOS. The difference, which is currently 20%, is decreasing between them.