Prominent tech companies like Apple have spent the past few years launching subscription services to capture more of the mobile gaming market. Apple Arcade in particular launched in September 2019 but subscriber numbers have yet to be released. How do we know if it has been successful? A survey was conducted to better understand where Arcade stands in the market and among gamers. Meanwhile, mobile companies are gearing up for 2021 and its mobile ad spend is expected to increase during the new year. Learn all about it in this week’s Mobile Monday!
Mobile Ad Spend To Reach $290 Billion in 2021
App Annie recently published their key mobile trends for 2021 and they expect mobile ad spend to reach $290 Billion in 2021. This estimation represents a 2-year CAGR of 21%. The high ad spend is a result of the growth in mobile activity during 2020. The average daily time spent per user went up 20% from 2019 during the pandemic, hitting a new high of 4 hours and 20 minutes per day. This equates to over 25% of the average user’s daily waking hours.
According to App Annie’s data, mobile ad placements increased by 70% in H1 2020 despite reduced budgets. The U.S. presidential election had a major impact on mobile ad spend in the latter part of 2020 and ad spend is not expected to slow down next year. App Annie believes that consumer shift to mobile is not an isolated trend and the increased time spent on mobile was already happening before global lockdowns. A large portion of this growth is expected to come from m-commerce which will likely see a surge next year.
Less Than Half of Apple Gamers Are Aware of Apple Arcade
Josh Burns, the founder of DigitalDevConnect, partnered with TapResearch to reveal survey findings surrounding Apple Arcade in a post on Mobile Dev Memo. The article revealed that almost one year after its launch only a moderate share (37%) of Apple gamers based in the United States were aware that Apple had a gaming subscription service. Furthermore, only 22% of that group could correctly recall its name.
The survey also asked Apple gamers who had not tried Apple Arcade (either by paying or using a free trial) how likely they would be to sign up for the service after listing key features, 36% said they were likely to participate in a free trial and only 22% said they were likely to sign up for a monthly paying subscription (17% for an annual subscription). In terms of demographics, Apple Arcade appeared to appeal to younger and more male players. Results showed that 51% of subscribers are 19-34, while 31% of all other Apple gamers. Also, 63% of subscribers are male vs. 48% of all other Apple gamers. Based on the survey results, the article suggested that Apple Arcade has struggled to gain awareness among mobile gamers and has not caught up to free-to-play games.
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