Moloco, a company specialized in machine learning and growth solutions for mobile marketers, has released its game advertising costs report. According to the report, casual game advertising costs have dropped 38% since the release of iOS 14.6. On the other hand, it was determined that the core game advertising costs increased by 78%.
These and other insights are contained in Moloco’s newly released “Post-IDFA Mobile Game Advertising Costs: Casual vs. Core” report. The report analyzed programmatic advertising data to understand better the impact of Apple’s latest privacy restrictions on user acquisition costs for mobile game marketers.
Moloco CEO Ikkjin Ahn said:
“The release of iOS 14.6 has changed the game for mobile marketers. While iOS installs of Casual games used to average more than twice the cost of Android installs, they’re now only slightly more expensive. And as more and more users opt-out of tracking, install costs for Core games are rising as advertisers compete to attract high-value users. Although these changes are substantial, the data in this report charts a clear path to success through Q4 2021 and beyond.”
The average cost-per-install (CPI) for casual games like arcade, card, and puzzle has dropped 38% since the release of iOS 14.6 on May 24, 2021. On iOS, the average CPI for casual games dropped 45%, while on Android, the drop was 30%. After iOS 14.5, advertising costs initially increased by 20% on both platforms, 20% on iOS, and 97% on Android. It was later dropped after procedures were implemented as part of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy.
Meanwhile, the core games category, which includes action, sports, racing, and card games, has seen advertising costs rise after iOS 14.5 on both iOS and Android. Increased costs were identified as 10% for iOS and 67% for Android. However, this increase did not last consistently after the release of iOS 14.6. The average CPI on iOS increased by an additional 64%, while the average CPI decreased by 8% on the Android side. These data also provide clues as to how advertisers act for the two different platform and game categories. In general, core games are accepted as more valuable than casual games in the markets. On the other hand, iOS traffic is seen as more valuable than Android traffic due to a number of factors.
To understand how advertising costs will change in the post-IDFA world, Moloco analyzed 13.5 billion ad impressions from across the iOS and Android programmatic advertising ecosystems. All the data in the “Post-IDFA Mobile Game Advertising Costs: Casual vs. Core” report was gathered via the Moloco Cloud automated mobile ad buying platform between January and September 2021.
By connecting mobile marketers to the world of programmatic supply through the industry’s leading exchanges, Moloco Cloud provides complete control over programmatic advertising operations while leveraging proprietary machine learning algorithms to maximize campaign performance.
