The mobile gaming ad industry has seen only modest growth in recent years, but new strategies gaining popularity among advertisers.
Mobile gaming ads are becoming more playable, and mobile campaigns longer and possibly more sophisticated. These are the key takeaways from a recent mobile gaming ad industry survey by mobile ad platform Mintegral.
U.S. growth. The U.S., the world’s highest-ranking country in advertiser volume, saw modest growth over the last year. U.S. mobile gaming ad spend increased 0.46%, according to Mintegral’s new report, “State of Media Buying in H1 2024.”
In the same period, the proportion of new advertisers decreased 29%. The overall volume of U.S. mobile gaming app advertisers rose one-quarter of a percent, remaining more or less stable.
As the proportion of new advertisers drops, advertisers with experience in mobile gaming app campaigns are increasing the length of campaigns across the board.
Longer campaigns. In nearly every gaming app category, campaign length increased during the first half of 2024, according to the Mintegral study.
Sports topped the field with an average ad campaign duration of 47 days. Social gaming apps and racing games rounded the top three. All three of these mainstream categories showed substantial increases in campaign length and are likely areas where established advertisers are committing more attention and ad dollars.
Only the Shooting and Tower Defense game categories saw campaigns get shorter, on average, and these decreases were minimal.
Playable ads. Playable ad adoption has more than doubled in the last year. In the first half of 2024, 7% of mobile gaming app advertisers adopted playable ads, up from 4% for the same period in 2023.
Here is where playable ads are being adopted by category.
Video ads remained the top ad format uniformly across genres, accounting for more than three-quarters of ads in each category.
Why we care. Seventy-nine percent of gamers play mobile games, making mobile apps the most important part of the ad and gaming ecosystem. Playable ads with gamified experiences and promotional offers, when designed right, are a savvy way to avoid intrusive interruptions. Longer campaign duration, and steady ad revenues, indicate many mobile game app advertisers are digging deeper into this part of their mix.
You can find Mintegral’s report here (registration required).
The post Playable ads and longer campaigns gain traction in mobile gaming appeared first on MarTech.
About the author
Chris Wood draws on over 15 years of reporting experience as a B2B editor and journalist. At DMN, he served as associate editor, offering original analysis on the evolving marketing tech landscape. He has interviewed leaders in tech and policy, from Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, to former Cisco CEO John Chambers, and Vivek Kundra, appointed by Barack Obama as the country’s first federal CIO. He is especially interested in how new technologies, including voice and blockchain, are disrupting the marketing world as we know it. In 2019, he moderated a panel on “innovation theater” at Fintech Inn, in Vilnius. In addition to his marketing-focused reporting in industry trades like Robotics Trends, Modern Brewery Age and AdNation News, Wood has also written for KIRKUS, and contributes fiction, criticism and poetry to several leading book blogs. He studied English at Fairfield University, and was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He lives in New York.
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