DeltaDNA: 94% of mobile game developers resort to advertising monetization

Methodology

The company interviewed 284 developers, publishers and studios.

Data about survey participants

• 94% of respondents use an advertising monetization model in games;
• 62% of respondents are engaged in the creation of casual games, the remaining 38% — midcore and hardcore titles;
• the most popular genre among the respondents is three—in-a-row;
• 10% of the surveyed projects can boast a DAU of 1 million people.

Advertising formats

• 68% of respondents resort to several advertising formats at once;
• 33% of respondents use from three advertising formats in the game at once;
• the most popular format is rewarded ads, 82% of respondents resort to it. It is often used in conjunction with fullscreen banners (interstitials);

The answer to the question: what format of advertising do you use?The only advertising formats that are more common in hardcore and midcore games than in casual ones are game advertising (playable) and the offer wall.

The answer to the question: what format of advertising do you use? (segmentation by genre)Impressions

• most companies try not to bombard users with a lot of advertising. 27% of respondents noted that they show the player no more than one advertisement per session;
• very few (15%) link impressions to the behavior of non-paying users, the same small number of respondents blocks ads if the user starts paying;

The answer to the question: which of the statements is true for your freeplay game regarding advertising?most of all, developers are afraid that when using advertising, they will increase the outflow of users.

• This is the main fear associated with advertising, 27% of respondents;
• this fear is most common among casual developers. The authors of hardcore and midcore games are more afraid of the deterioration of the gaming experience and the loss of revenue from IAP.

The answer to the question: which of these factors do you fear the most when setting the frequency of ad impressions?Advertising revenue

• for half of the surveyed casual developers, advertising is responsible for 40% or more of all revenue;
• 13% of the surveyed casual developers rely almost exclusively on advertising;
• the share of hardcore and midcore games in which advertising started earning more than 20% of all revenue has increased by 15 percentage points over the past three years.

The answer to the question: How is revenue roughly distributed between advertising and IAP in your most monetized free-to-play mobile game? ***

You can download the full version of the study at this link.

Also on the topic:

• DeltaDNA: rewarding advertising is in 58% of free-play gamesDeltaDNA: women spend more in mobile games than men