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RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

AppsFlyer’s State of Gaming App Marketing

reports increasing gaming apps demand

maintained high levels of revenue. As mobile ad-
vertising faces challenges, marketers can look
more toward purchases, since there’s evidence
that consumers are becoming less tolerant of in-
app advertising and willing to spend more in-app.

• IAP (In-App Purchase) revenue climbed. In con-
trast, IAA (In-App Advertising) decreased by 16%
in the same timeframe.

• Hyper Casual games saw an increase of 250%
AppsFlyer’s The State of Gaming App Marketing for non-organic installs. The growth is attributed
report examines the growth of the mobile gaming to marketers understanding that many new players
industry in 2020 to provide marketers an in-depth were trying mobile gaming for the first time during
analysis of global data-driven insights, industry the pandemic.
trends, and growth opportunities, as well as
performance benchmarks in 16 key markets. • Media costs rose across genres and geogra-
phies as the pandemic continued while market-
ing fell, causing non-organic installs to fall.
Games have long been the driving force of the mobile
app economy. Yet, the global pandemic helped mobile • The most significant growth factor was aggres-
gaming reach an entirely new level with a 45% jump in
installs compared to 2019—40% higher than last year’s sive user acquisition (UA) early on. Large num-
growth rate. bers of UA at the beginning of the pandemic fueled
ongoing success after install decline.
“It’s not a surprise that we saw a massive increase in
new players trying games for the first time; in particular, “While there was robust growth in gaming app installs
Hyper Casual installs surged 90%, including a stagger- over the first few quarters of 2020, it’s clear that there
ing 250% in the number of marketing-driven non- are still areas for major growth,” said Brian Murphy,
organic installs,” said Shani Rosenfelder, Head of Con- Head of Gaming, AppsFlyer. “Install growth and the
tent & Mobile Insights, AppsFlyer. return of big brands beyond gaming created a surge in
media costs, demonstrating the need for marketers to
“What’s significant is that gaming apps realized the op- implement less-expensive strategies. The most over-
portunity to accelerate their user acquisition efforts and looked tactic in mobile gaming apps is remarketing, as
took full advantage of this trend while in the moment. re-engaging users has been a key driver of revenue in
The brands that made the reactive, nimble moves to 2020.”
meet heightened demand dominated the stay-at-home
peaks in gaming app engagement.” It’s possible that this explosive success is the “new nor-
mal” in gaming, as revenue has remained strong in
Gaming apps were able to maintain impressive revenue 2020 while it dropped throughout 2019. However, with
figures in the months that followed lockdowns world- much uncertainty on the horizon—from the far-reaching
wide by continuing to engage a large number of users economic effects of the pandemic, and other factors
who installed new games at the start of the pandemic. like iOS14’s changes to the App Tracking Transparency
framework—it’s hard to say for certain what’s around
AppFlyer analyzed 9.2 billion app installs for the study, the corner.
identifying the following key findings:
For more details, feel free to read the full report. ◊
• 25% increase in in-app purchase (IAP) revenue
during COVID-19 lockdowns. The rise was driven By MediaBUZZ
largely by Casual games, which jumped 55% and

July 2021: Mobile Marketing & Analytics 9