Liftoff has recently released its 2023 Casual Gaming Apps Report to provide valuable insights for game advertisers and mobile game marketers to maximize their ad spend. The report analyzed more than 390 billion ad impressions and 16.7 billion clicks across 100 million installs and includes three main sections.
Firstly, the report includes an annual breakdown of benchmarks for advertising costs and revenue. Secondly, it highlights the mobile game genres and subgenres that are driving the most installs. Lastly, it covers the latest trends shaking up the casual game market.
The report revealed some key findings, including that simulation games have the lowest CPI (cost per install) at $0.59. When comparing puzzle, lifestyle, and simulation games, the latter was found to provide the lowest user acquisition costs. The report also highlighted that hyper-casual and puzzle games are the biggest install drivers across all genres.
2023 Casual Gaming Apps Report also found that iOS users are three times more expensive to target for casual game apps compared to Android users. The average CPI for Android is $0.63, while it is $2.23 for iOS. Despite the cost margin, seven-day (D7) ROAS rates are similar between the two platforms.
North America has the highest average CPI worldwide at $3.59, which is over three times as much as the CPI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Comparatively, Latin America has the lowest CPI at $0.55 per install, although it also has the lowest D7 ROAS at 4.8%.
Joel Julkunen, Head of Analytics at GameRefinery, advised that to succeed in the current climate, mobile game marketers and developers should focus less on scaling quickly and more on steady revenue growth. To do so, they should tap into revenue-driving trends that are proving to be a hit with casual gamers, such as hybrid elements and competitive events.
The report also noted that the total download market share of the hyper-casual genre has fallen from around 50% in Q1 2021 to just over 30% in Q1 2023. Developers are responding by pivoting to hybrid-casual games, which combine gameplay mechanics and layers from two or more genres to broaden the motivational appeal and monetization opportunities available.
The full version of the 2023 Casual Gaming Apps Report, which provides valuable insights for game advertisers and mobile game marketers to help them get the best value on their ad spend, is also available.
