The biggest holiday shopping event is almost at an end and sales are expected to be huge this year. Revenue from Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday are all expected to grow by double digits thanks in large part to mobile shopping. Meanwhile, the growing popularity of hyper-casual games has changed the way developers monetize their mobile games. Learn all about it in this week’s Mobile Monday!
Developers Rely on In-Game Ads as IAP Decreases
Mobile marketing analytics company AppsFlyer released the 2019 edition of The State of Gaming App Marketing. The report asserted that mobile game monetization is increasingly moving away from just in-app purchases and becoming a mix of IAP and in-app advertising. This change is being bolstered by the growth of hyper-casual titles. The category has the highest number of installs on average in 50% of the top global markets. Additionally, the amount of hyper-casual games in app stores has increased by 170% this year which is more than three times the gaming industry average. Hyper casual gamers rarely make purchases in those apps so developers have to rely heavily on in-game ads.
The spread of in-app advertising has also made its way into midcore and hardcore games. The share of revenue generated from ads among core games has increased by 34%. In hardcore and midcore games specifically, the share of revenue generated from ads has gone up by 40% and 32%, respectively. Midcore games have seen a 46% drop in the share of paying users while hardcore games, like strategy and role-playing games, have gone down by 15%. App companies have had to adjust their monetization strategies to make up for the lost revenue from gamers’ changing preferences.
Thanksgiving Week Sales Boosted By Mobile Shopping
Research by Adobe Analytics says that Thanksgiving week sales have grown in big numbers since last year. Thanksgiving Day sales are expected to go increase by 19.7% this year, totaling $4.4 billion. Black Friday is forecasted to reach $7.5 billion, up 20.5% from last year. Cyber Monday is expected to reach a new record of $9.4 billion, a 19.1% jump year-over-year. Cyber Monday’s rise in sales asserts that more and more consumers are opting to shop online rather than wait in the long lines at retail stores.
The boost in holiday sales can be largely attributed to the growth of mobile shopping. Adobe Analytics estimates that 34.3% of all e-commerce sales will be made on smartphones, up 24.2% from the previous year. App Annie also expects to see a 25% increase in time spent mobile shopping during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Furthermore, many shoppers still rely on brick and mortar stores as evident by the 27% increase in “buy online, pickup in-store” sales.
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