The mobile market intelligence tool AppMagic shared a report on hyper-casual games and how they performed in Q1 2023. Written by Diana Levintova, the report also collaborates with Meta and gives out detailed information about general market trends and monetization strategies.
General Market Trends
Comparing the total downloads in Q1 2023 with the same metric in Q4 2022, a decrease of 5% can be observed. The market declined from 4 billion installs in the previous quarter to 3.8 billion installs in Q1 2023. However, a more significant downtrend can be noticed when comparing Q1 2022 to Q1 2023. Last year, downloads were 4.2 billion in the first quarter, which is 10% higher than this year.
In terms of the regional split, the market has decreased by as little as 2% in the Tier-1 West region and by 6% in all other countries. At the same time, the Tier-1 East region has, in fact, grown despite the overall downtrend in 2022, demonstrating a 15% increase.
Top 10 Games By Downloads
There are a few old-timers that don’t want to give up their positions: Going Balls, Bridge Race, Car Games 3D: Car Racing, Tall Man Run, and Race Master 3D – Car Racing. Appmagic focuses on new games rather than older ones and how they run their monetization strategies.
Standard Practices For Monetization
First of all, all the top ten games use the Meta Audience Network as their in-app ads monetization partner (and look how well they performed!). As for the five newbies, most of them use hybrid model with both In-app Ads with a few In-App Purchase Offers (IAPs). Usually In-app Ads are focused primarily on the Rewarded Videos, which allows users to move on to further levels, earn in-game currency, get tips on completing levels, customize their character, or boost skills.
Another mechanic to get all of the mentioned above that two games out of five use is the Fortune Wheel. As is rather self-explanatory, it involves spinning a virtual wheel to win a prize or reward, which adds an element of chance and excitement to the game.
Players are also shown Banner Ads quite often: they usually have a bottom placement and are always visible. Another monetization trick employed by many is Interstitial Videos: the common practice is to show them after the user has completed several levels and still hasn’t watched any Rewarded Videos.
In-App Purchase Offers are usually focused on skipping Rewarded Videos, No-Ads Offers, and Offer Packs that remove ads and give additional rewards. In most cases, it’s a one-time purchase, while in one of the games, the subscription approach with a 3-day trial is suggested instead. Not only does it allow removing all the ads, but it also unlocks additional game features.
The full report with details can be read on AppMagic’s website.
