gaming

Play Longer, Spend More: Gamers Become Serious About Mobile

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 13:00:52 +0000

Play Longer, Spend More: Gamers Become Serious About Mobile

By: Toby Vogels (@tobyvogels), Mobile Developer Evangelist

Anonymous Tue, 06/20/2017 - 06:00

2017-06-20

Tags

App Insights

gaming

Gaming has been a crucial part of the mobile industry since the launch of the App Store in 2008. For seven years in a row, gaming apps have been used more than apps from any other category. Consequently, mobile gaming has truly shaped how we engage on our smartphones today. However, since 2015, gaming sessions have been on the decline. Does that indicate the end of the mobile gaming era?

At Flurry Analytics, we reviewed the gaming industry based on app usage (Flurry Analytics tracks over 940,000 apps across all app categories which provides insights into 2.1 Billion devices). To investigate current mobile gaming trends, we examined gaming categories combining iOS and Android data and bundled related gaming categories together.

Who are the heavy gamers?

The top 5 mobile gaming countries (United States, India, China, Brazil and Russia) are driving 50% of all global gaming sessions. While the United States, India, and China take the top positions for gaming sessions, other countries are also showing a growing percentage of gaming addicts. For example, the United States accounts for 20% of all gaming sessions globally, but only 13% of all U.S. app sessions are games.

According to Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, users who are spending more than 5 hours per week in mobile games in North America are 52% female, 38.6 years old, and use both a smartphone and a tablet for gaming in 60% of all cases. While the real gaming addicts are in Europe (users in Netherlands and Sweden spend both 31% of all their app sessions in games), these countries don’t have a significant attribution to the overall global gaming sessions. In fact, Netherlands only accounts for 2% and Sweden for about 1% of all global gaming sessions.

Key Gaming Categories in Decline

For the second year in a row, gaming sessions are declining year-over-year. Three years ago, arcade, casual and brain games were driving 55% of all gaming sessions. Since then, we have seen substantial declines in two of those categories: arcade and casual games. Arcade games, which accounted for 24% of all gaming sessions in 2014, decreased by 34%, and casual games by 50%. The declines of those two very large gaming categories were a key factor for the overall game session downturn within the last two years. A lot of those sessions simply dropped and were not spent in other gaming categories.

Are there any winners in a time of declines?

While mobile gaming sessions have declined by 10% year-over-year, some categories continue to gain traction in usage. This year, card & casino apps reached a spot in the top three gaming categories. Sessions grew by 22% since 2014, and the category now accounts for 15% of all gaming sessions. Separately, the growth of smaller app categories is driving diversification for the industry. For example, board and strategy games grew 29% year-over-year from 2016 to 2017 and sessions are up 80% since 2014. This rise increased the category’s session share of all gaming apps from 1.6% to 4.0%.

We have also identified similar trends in other smaller categories such as racing. Racing grew by 26% year-over-year and increased its game app session share from 1.6% in 2014 to 2.1% in 2017.

Fewer but longer gaming sessions

Flurry data shows that time spent in gaming apps has remained steady over the last year (+1%). The average US consumer spends 33 minutes per day in mobile games, and our data showed that the average session length grew from 6 minutes and 22 seconds in 2016 to 7 minutes and 6 seconds in 2017. This is a significant advance, considering that the average session length never exceeded 6 minutes in 2014 or 2015. Additionally, the latest year-over-year session length growth equals an increase of 44 seconds (+12%) per session, which indicates higher in-game user engagement than in previous years. These statistics reveal that while more gamers open gaming apps less often, they often spend more time playing games during each session.

Size DOES Matter

In the gaming industry, one thing remains true: the bigger the screen, the greater the engagement.

When users play on-the-go, they take their medium-sized phone or phablet. However, if they’re purposely dedicating time out of their day to mobile gaming, they are more likely to pick up their full-size tablet device, which explains average session lengths of over 10 minutes on full-size tablets.

With regard to the hours of the day that are most popular for on-the-go versus on-the-couch gaming, tablet gaming showed a steady peak in the morning. Most users carry their phone with them during the day, especially in the morning as they commute to school or work, so this is when many gamers play on-the-go. On the other hand, the use of tablets for couch gaming peaks in the evening, as more users log in from the comfort of their couch or bed. While gaming time on the phone still peaks in the evening, it’s important to consider that overall phone usage peaks at that time as well.

New users reflect increased revenue opportunities

As noted above, the reported shift in time spent on apps leads to more engaged attention spans at a time, which creates new monetization opportunities. Recently, SensorTower disclosed that the combined mobile gaming app store revenue on iOS and Android increased from $7.8 Bn in Q1 2016 to $11.9 Bn in Q1 2017. This equals a 53% year-over-year revenue growth. Besides different gameplay periods, users are becoming more comfortable spending money in apps, which is positively impacting mobile game revenue. SensorTower also found that download to revenue conversion on iOS has increased by 38% from January 2016 to January 2017. All of these observations lead to the conclusion that the mobile gaming industry still has high potential to drive revenue.

Mobile gaming beyond 2017 and tips for app developers

The gaming industry remains a very attractive category for app developers, especially as revenue conversions are growing. We’re seeing that longer session lengths are opening up new opportunities for innovative engagement and monetization tactics. For example, the peak usage hours on mobile devices are between 6 and 9 pm, which app developers can leverage to target specific users with acquisition or engagement campaigns.

Looking ahead, we anticipate new technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality to open a new chapter of mobile gaming and to enhance the in-app experience as a whole. And gamers are ready: they are already having longer gameplays on their favorite gaming apps than ever.

Apps Drive Olympic-Level Engagement as TV Loses at the 2016 Rio Games

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 17:05:18 +0000

Apps Drive Olympic-Level Engagement as TV Loses at the 2016 Rio Games

By: Chris Klotzbach, Director at Flurry from Yahoo and Lali Kesiraju, Marketing and Analytics Manager

Anonymous Wed, 08/24/2016 - 10:05

2016-08-24

Tags

gaming

App Insights

The 2016 Rio Olympics proved that users are continuing to shift their attention from traditional media to mobile devices. NBC saw Rio Olympics ratings decline by 18% from London’s 2012 Games. While many publications speculate that interest in the Games has not waned, but rather viewers consumed content via livestreams, Flurry has the proof to show the impact mobile apps had on the Olympic games.

We compared Sports News apps usage during the games to an average day in July and found that sessions grew substantially in key countries, as well as globally, throughout the duration of the games. While there was plenty of evidence to indicate an increase in China’s streaming and mobile usage, Flurry does not track the apps that had exclusive distribution deals in the region.

Boots On The Ground at The Games

While the long term impact of the Games on Brazil and Rio de Janeiro is still to be determined, we wanted to see how increased tourism and attention on the country impacted mobile usage.

Comparing mobile app usage during the games to an average day in July, Brazil saw an 24x increase in sessions compared to the increase in the rest of LATAM. Brazil’s mobile app usage grew by 8M sessions a day on average during the Olympics. We are observing hundreds of millions of sessions on any given day, and this increase in such a short period of time is substantial. As we have often illustrated, let’s hope that there’s a correlation between increased mobile activity and positive impact on the country of Brazil!

Gaming: The Lingua Franca of Mobile

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 07:06:29 +0000

Gaming: The Lingua Franca of Mobile

Jarah Euston

Anonymous Wed, 04/01/2015 - 00:06

2014-09-18

Tags

gaming

App Insights

Some entertainers, like Michael Jackson, become worldwide stars. Others, like Psy of Gangnam Style, capture the world’s attention for 15 minutes. And others stop at the border, never attaining international fame. With games, the same is true. What makes one gaming title spread like wildfire beyond its country of origin to become an international juggernaut, while another is only a local hit? In today’s report, we investigate.

Gaming is the Global Pastime

In this study, we dove deep into global gaming activity to understand which types of games cross borders, and which tend to stay local. For the purpose of this report, we restricted the consideration set to Android devices only, due to its larger market share internationally.

Gaming is truly a global pastime, and Flurry’s data proves it. The chart above displays the average daily time spent in all gaming categories. Globally, gamers are averaging 37 minutes a day playing games. The US leads the pack with nearly 51.8 minutes a day, followed by another leading industrial powerhouse, Germany, with 47.1 minutes. China rounds out the top 10 with 28.6 minutes. It’s a testament to mobile’s global reach that half of the top 10 countries are outside the West. It’s this reach that makes gaming the lingua franca of the modern world.

We Are What We Play

So what types of games are we playing during those 37 minutes (on average) a day? Interestingly, that depends on where you live. The chart below examines the distribution of gaming app sessions by category and country.

Arcade & Action and Casual games command the largest share of all gaming sessions in most countries – Germany, Italy, and South Korea are outliers. In Germany, Brain & Puzzle games, such as social quizzes, account for 53% of all gaming sessions. Similarly, Italians spend 55% of sessions in these apps. In South Korea, people go gaga for Arcade & Action games played through ubiquitous social messaging platform Kakao, with 74% of all gamers playing Arcade & Action titles. In comparison, Sports games and Cards & Casino games generate relatively fewer sessions across the board. It appears that everyone likes a word game, but not everyone wants to play poker.

Favorite Gaming Flavors Differ From Country to Country

To better understand these behaviors, we looked at the monthly session frequency by category and country. Monthly session frequency is the average number of times a user opens the app in a month. We then compared each country’s average monthly frequency in each category to the worldwide average. Through this comparison seen in the above map we can identify which countries engage in which gaming categories significantly more than the worldwide average. It turns out, Germans love puzzles and quizzes. The average gaming device in Germany has 66 monthly sessions in Brain & Puzzle games, 154% more than the worldwide average of 26. The hugely popular “4 Pics One Word” is from Germany after all.

Indians on the other hand get their kicks in Card Games, generating 119% more card gaming sessions than the global average. For the purpose of this analysis, card games include things like poker- or in this case, the local variant called teen patti (“three cards” in English). Solitaire is also very popular in India. Italians love word games, Brazil is nuts for fantasy football (soccer, that is), Russia goes for classic casual games with a physics element, and South Korea doesn’t play unless the game is on Kakao, and even then it’s simple arcade type games – the cuter the better.

Next Step, World Domination?

Given these country-specific preferences, what’s a game developer to do? If world domination is the goal, the data suggests it is best to focus on categories with the broadest appeal. The below chart displays the penetration of each category by country, defined as the percentage of gamers playing these categories.

Arcade & Action and Casual are clearly the gaming categories with the broadest appeal. In almost all of the top gaming countries, at least half of gamers engage with these games. For example, 74% of South Korea’s gaming sessions are in Arcade & Action games, but a whopping 82% of gamers in that country play an Arcade & Action game. Russia takes the lead in Casual game penetration, with 69% of all devices engaging in at least one session of a Casual game. Cards & Casino are popular in the US and in the UK, where real money gaming is legal. Sports games appeal to a niche audience, and within that category, the particular sporting interest varies by country. In India it’s all about cricket while in the UK they’re mad for soccer (er, football).

So it turns out that while we all speak the language of gaming, distinct dialects exist. It’s no surprise that international blockbusters like Angry Birds, Hay Day, or Game of War fall into the most-played categories. With the global gaming market expected to reach $24B by 2017, there’s plenty of room for both international standard-bearers and local delicacies alike.

Flurry’s Gaming Matrix Re-loaded on Android

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 06:28:18 +0000

Flurry’s Gaming Matrix Re-loaded on Android

By: Torrey Lincoln

Anonymous Tue, 03/31/2015 - 23:28

2014-03-18

Tags

monetization

gaming

App Insights

In the past 18 months, Android has emerged as a major gaming platform. Yesterday at GDC in San Francisco, we unveiled that over 70% of all Android devices engage in at least one gaming app per month. On the Flurry platform alone we see over 525 million worldwide Android devices actively engaged in mobile gaming each month. But the perception is that iOS is the more mature ecosystem and that Android is still sorting itself out, especially around business models. As we have done with the iOS platform, today we unveil the retention matrix for Android, which we hope is a helpful reference and guide for developers.

Let’s take a look at the retention matrix for 1,382 of the top gaming apps for Android. On the X-axis is 30-day Static Retention, as defined as the percentage of new users who opened the app 30 days after install (this is not to be confused with Flurry’s Rolling Retention, which looks at the percentage of new users who open the app 30 days or later after the install). On the Y-axis is the average sessions per week for that genre. The genres plotted on the chart have been manually curated by Flurry and reflect the game mechanic of the apps.

Quadrant I houses those evergreen genres that are most likely to keep their users highly engaged for long periods of time, and are typically dominated by advertising. These easy-to-play, repeatable games have strong staying power, as evidenced by their high retention. According to Flurry data, good ol’ Solitaire is the game that never gets old, with the highest retention of any genre at 50%. Not surprisingly, Social Turn-Based games have the highest session frequency and high retention given their social nature. Successful apps in this genre have built in appointment mechanics, requirements that a player return to the game in a certain time period to gain a reward, which are critical to get those high frequency and return metrics. Genres in Quadrant I are particularly amenable to ads as they have the potential to generate a very high impression count over time given their high frequency and retention rates. It’s not uncommon to see advertising generate 90% of these games’ revenue.

At these retention levels, re-engagement marketing becomes compelling, as there is opportunity to recapture users who are likely to stick around for another long spell. Since we know the peak usage for the average game only lasts two months, re-engagement is very important for these titles. Evergreen genres are also great games to use as a platform for promoting your other, higher ARPU (average revenue per user) titles.

Games in quadrant II have high frequency but lower retention rates. In other words, they’re used often but for limited time periods. This implies that those users who do stick around will be highly engaged. To maximize revenue in genres like management/simulation, slots, and strategy, tip the balance towards IAPs, as these players are willing to pay good money for content and capabilities. But don’t ignore the significant percentage of players who won’t pay. Use rewarded video ads to get the non-payers to engage more with the game by letting them earn the currency they value.

In these genres, take advantage of this intense play with offers and new content early and often (and at times of key emotional investment). Content releases need to be complete, submitted, and ready near initial push of the game, as players won’t stick around for improvements.

Genres in Quadrant III have relatively low retention and frequency. These genres have the pickiest audiences, but those that stay…pay. Like Quadrant II, focus on IAP and use video ad opportunities to monetize those users who don’t pay but want to continue playing. Well-spaced interstitials that are not too disruptive are another good choice for these genres. Developers should look to maximize revenue early in the lifecycle of game.

For these low-retention genres, it can be difficult to find right kind of user. What are known to be the highest ARPDAU (average revenue per daily active user) categories (Card-Battle and Strategy) have low “loyalty” – this is in part due to heavy marketing despite only a niche audience being interested in the genre. It’s worth the broad marketing for some of these games because when they do find a good user it is highly valuable. That said, targeting by age, gender, and persona can improve efficiency.

Quadrant IV, like Quadrant I, houses genres with extremely high retention, but relatively lower frequency. Match 3/Bubble shooter and Endless Runner genres are on the border here. We say “relatively” lower frequency as these games are still played at least once a day on average. Monetization strategy tips slightly more towards advertising given the high number of impressions generated over time. Of course, if you’ve got a hit like Candy Crush, the game can monetize quite nicely through IAP.

The first step in monetizing any app is acquiring new users. To understand whom to target, we next looked at the age and gender distribution of our game genres. On the X-axis is the average percentage of MAU that is female and the Y-axis is average age of MAU in the genre.

Not surprisingly, Android skews male and younger. Most Android genres appeal to males under 35, suggesting there’s an opportunity for an Android game that appeals to older males. Solitaire and Slots are the only genres that have a firm middle-aged audience, with Solitaire skewing more female.

Games that monetize through IAP, such as Card/Battle, Strategy, and Action/RPG titles, are more appealing to men. Genres more appealing to women- Solitaire, Brain/Quiz- are those that are more amenable to monetizing through advertising. Of course, there are always exceptions and hit titles generally figure out how to make both men and women pay.

There’s a player for every Android game. And for every game there’s the perfect mix of IAP and advertising to make it a successful business. If the game has the potential to generate high levels of impressions- either through high frequency, retention, or both- consider some form of advertising. If the game appeals to the few, the proud, the payers- focus on IAPs. Whatever the monetization strategy, target your acquisition efforts to find the right player.

The Gamification of Mobile Games

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 23:36:11 +0000

The Gamification of Mobile Games

By Dan Laughlin

Anonymous Wed, 03/11/2015 - 16:36

2012-12-12

Tags

App Insights

gaming

Apps are big business, and the biggest app business is games. In 2012, Flurry estimates revenue earned from apps will approach $10 billion, with games taking over 80% of the pie. The free-to-play business model (aka freemium), where consumers download and play the “core loop” of a game for free, but then pay for virtual goods and currency through micro-transactions, is the most prolific business model in the new era of digital distribution. When it comes to app consumption on iOS and Android smart devices, consumers spend over 40% of all their time using games.

The most successful companies in the new mobile economy, from Electronic Arts to Zynga and Mobage to Supercell, deeply understand consumer behavior differences by game genre. This level of understanding greatly informs a company’s app acquisition, retention and monetization strategies. In this report, Flurry examines the consumer behavior differences by app usage, retention and demographics for the top nine freemium game genres in mobile gaming. For this analysis, Flurry leveraged a sample of more than 300 million consumers using iOS and Android games each month. Please note that, for consistency, we include only free titles.

In the chart below, we lay out a “loyalty matrix” that plots the top nine freemium game categories by how often they’re used compared to how long consumers continue to use them over time. Specifically, we plot the 90-day retention rate of app categories on the x-axis against the frequency of use per week on the y-axis. We lay the “scatterplot” out in a Cartesian coordinate system with four quadrants.

Quadrant I represents a “sweet spot” for developers, whose games are used intensively by a set of highly retained users. Well-designed “appointment” mechanics drive frequency, as users are compelled to maintain and progress in their respective game. Social Turn-based games succeed in building an active, loyal user base by offering popular “evergreen” games played among friends. From a revenue perspective, while there exists significant potential to show advertising impressions to consumers who use so frequently, games in the Slots and Resource Management & Simulation (labeled as “Mgmt/Sim”) genres commonly monetize via in-app purchase. However, companies that maximize revenue in Quadrant I extract revenue from consumers willing to pay via in-app purchase, and then by showing ads to those who do not pay.

Quadrant II is characterized by the most intensive usage over a short customer lifecycle, and is occupied solely by the Strategy genre. This audience is demanding, game lifecycles are short and a game’s live services must be flawlessly executed. Successful Strategy game developers accelerate monetization by driving competition among players (“Player vs. Player”) and by encouraging fast game progress through premium currency spends. With frequency of use so high, users churn through content quickly. To maximize retention, developers must continuously release new content after the game’s initial launch.

Quadrant III also attracts a fickle gaming audience, but adds the challenge of having fewer opportunities per week to monetize the user. The well-documented success of the Card-Battle genre in Asia, and now Western markets, is even more impressive when considering the short time frame developers have to drive transactions. Targeted user acquisition is critical to avoid paying for large batches of users that will drop off quickly due to the “hardcore” nature of the content and game mechanics.

Quadrant IV features easy-to-play and highly repeatable games that can remain on a user’s “play list” for years. These evergreen titles may lack the depth required to generate sizeable in-app purchases, but do generate substantial advertising impressions over time. In addition to driving strong ad revenue, the large audience size of these games can be used to cross-promote a developer’s more narrowly focused, but better monetizing titles.

As the mobile app economy grows, the sophistication of its related advertising services will reach those found on the Internet today. Leveraging big data, the ability to target users based on demographics and personas, and then track the effectiveness of such targeting is just starting to take hold (Flurry has invested in this direction with its own services like Flurry AppCircle, an ad network, and Flurry Ad Analytics, an ad effectiveness solution). As developers and app marketing providers become more savvy, they can better acquire the kinds of users that will reliably play and pay in their apps. Below, using the same sample set of games, we look at the Age and Gender of users by genre.

A quick review shows that Quadrant I is largely comprised of middle-aged females that play games we know to have attractive retention and usage metrics.

Quadrant II shows that males are not extending into the same 40+ average age-range as female players. Casino / Poker games tend to attract older males the best.

Quadrant III is undoubtedly the hottest sector of the mobile gaming market, with young, male “core” gamers pausing their console gameplay sessions to increasingly play mobile games. These young men are difficult to corral, but can monetize at a rate that justifies the cost and effort of acquisition.

Quadrant IV shows younger females adopting games that feature more involved gameplay than those played by the middle-aged female crowd. While the youngest users enjoy the quick solo experience of the Endless genre, the late twenties / early thirties crowd are diving deeper into game mechanics and making it a social experience.

As mobile gaming rapidly matures, it is becoming increasingly difficult for new and small developers to succeed. The game quality bar has risen dramatically, user acquisition costs continue to climb and organic installs via app store discovery and featuring are harder to come by. One great equalizer for developers is the ability to collect and harness the power of data. In fact, game developers tend to be the “power users” of analytics, using sophisticated metrics to track user progress, tune gameplay and maximize monetization (a large part of Flurry Analytics’ use base is game developers). In an industry that has historically been considered more artistic and subjective, connected devices and the ability to rapidly iterate on already shipped titles has ushered in an age of science and measurement. In short, data has enabled the “gamification” of the mobile industry.

Social Networking Ends Games 40 Month Mobile Reign

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 23:10:57 +0000

Social Networking Ends Games 40 Month Mobile Reign

By Peter Farago, VP Marketing

Anonymous Wed, 03/11/2015 - 16:10

2012-04-27

Tags

App Insights

gaming

The app revolution has changed the way software is distributed and used among consumers. With a perfect storm of digital distribution, free content and powerful touch screen devices, the success of mobile apps has disrupted industries from telecommunications and games to music and news. To date, no category of apps has been more successful than Games, directly disrupting the traditional gaming industry. Flurry recently wrote about the impact iOS and Android game popularity has had on Sony and Nintendo. And with low barriers to entry for armies of entrepreneurial developers, indie game developers continue to thrive on iOS and Android.

Consider for a moment Facebook’s speedy billion-dollar acquisition of Instagram, a service that succeeds by delivering Facebook’s core value proposition of photo sharing, but only on mobile. When one understands that consumers now spend more time in mobile apps than they do online, Instagram’s value begins to make sense. With over 500 million iOS and Android devices in the market, mobile apps are the new battleground for consumer engagement. If Facebook feels compelled to snap up Instagram in this way, perhaps this is an indication of how relevant social networking has become in mobile apps, or simply how relevant mobile has become overall. In this report, Flurry focuses on the rise of the Social Networking category in mobile apps. Let’s start by looking at where consumers spend their time by application category.

In the chart above, Flurry compares the time consumers spend across different application categories when using smartphones. Starting on the left, we look at the average number of minutes a consumer spent each day, over the course of Q1 2011, across different app categories. For this period, we calculated that consumers spent 25 minutes (37%) of their app-using time in Games. They additionally spent 15 minutes (22%) of their time in Social Networking apps. News and Entertainment were the next most popular categories, garnering an average of 11 (16%) and 10 (15%) minutes per day, respectively. All other categories combined made up the final 7 minutes (10%) of time. During Q1 2011, Flurry tracked approximately 30 billion application sessions worldwide.

On the right, we conduct the same analysis for Q1 2012. Compared to the same quarter in 2011, time spent per consumer each day increased from 68 to 77 minutes. Additionally, the distribution of time spent per category shifted. Games usage dropped by 4% down to 24 minutes per day, while Social Networking increased by 60% up to 24 minutes per day. Games and Social Networking categories each controlled 31% of consumers’ time. News, Entertainment and Other categories commanded 12 (15%), 10 (13%) and 7 (9%) minutes, respectively. Flurry tracked approximately 110 billion application sessions during Q1 2012.

The most significant trend is that, for the first time in the history of applications (Flurry began tracking application usage in 2008), another app category is rivaling Games. We take the rise in Social Networking apps as a signal of maturation for the platform. As game demand may be hitting its saturation point, consumers are also discovering other apps, namely Social Networking. The year-over-year growth in Social Networking has been staggering. Not only has time spent increased by 60%, but also within a growing amount of total time spent in smartphone apps among consumers, from 68 to 77 minutes, or a growth rate of 13%.

Through its mobile app traffic acquisition network, Flurry AppCircle, the company can also see how apps with growing audiences earn revenue through advertising. When app developers amass larger audiences, among the chief ways to monetize their businesses is by showing ads to their consumers. In the chart below, we show revenue earned by publishers in the Flurry AppCircle ad network for each of the last three months. Flurry AppCircle reaches over 300 million unique devices per month, making it one of the industry’s largest ad networks by reach. The columns in the chart grow from month-to-month at the same proportion as AppCircle publisher revenue growth. From just February to April of this year, Flurry AppCircle publisher revenue has grown by 23%. Please note that we forecast the remaining few days of April for the chart below.

From inspection, ad revenue in apps is driven primarily by Games and Social Networking categories. In other words, audiences using these apps a combination of the largest and most receptive to ads. For February, March and April, Games apps earned 35%, 35% and 36% of total ad revenue in the AppCircle network. Over the same three months, Social Networking climbed from 24% in February to 25% in March, and then to 37% in April. This is the first time in Flurry’s history that any category has surpassed Games in ad revenue generated (Flurry launched AppCircle summer 2010).

Over the last couple of years, the term “SoLoMo” was coined to describe the convergence of social experiences on mobile devices that leverage some element of proximity (i.e., location) to the experience. While a Silicon Valley term in origin, it speaks to the new consumer experiences possible when dreaming up any combination of these three factors. Phones are powerful, connected and always with consumers. And they are considered personal devices that easily enable sharing of personal content and information through apps. Build a clever app that leverages these aspects in a compelling way, and you could have the next Pinterest or Instagram.

As business ventures, the ability for Social Networking apps to engage consumers in a meaningful way is driving a wave of investment and bullish valuations. Social networks like Pinterest, Path and Skout are raising major venture capital rounds. This month, Andreessen Horowitz invested $22 million into Skout, and Greylock and Redpoint helped plow $30 million into Path. Pinterest, which has a strong mobile component, has become the third most popular social network behind Facebook and Twitter, and ahead of LinkedIn, Tagged and Google+. With so much innovation, coupled with high engagement among consumers, this appears to be only the beginning.

The rise of Social Networking apps also signals the end of the era of gaming dominance within mobile apps. While the free-to-play business model performs extremely well, enabled by in-app-purchases, it does so primarily for simulation games, a sub-genre of the total games category. As long as the total iOS and Android installed base grows, all categories will continue to grow naturally. However, as we reach saturation for mobile gaming on a per user basis (one consumer can play only so many free-to-play games), the Games category could start behaving more like a “zero sum game” from here on out, meaning that game companies would have to fight over a finite group of consumers in order to grow their businesses. For one app to grow, it would have to take from its competitors. Even with an influx of new consumers into the market, the expected would-be casual gamers will be increasingly wooed away from games by compelling Social Networking and other apps. Going forward, the Games category will have to look to innovate on mobile to maintain its dominance and growth.

For the comparison of minutes spent in this blog post, it’s important to clarify that these figures exclude tablet usage, and focus on smartphones only. While Flurry calculates that consumers spend an average of 94 minutes per day using mobile apps, that figure is a reflection of total usage spread over both smartphones and tablets. When we isolate just smartphone usage, as we’ve done in this analysis, the number of minutes spent on apps is lower.

Mobile Freemium Games: Gen Y Plays, but Gen X Pays

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 21:33:34 +0000

Mobile Freemium Games: Gen Y Plays, but Gen X Pays

By Jeferson Valadares

Anonymous Wed, 03/11/2015 - 14:33

2011-09-08

Tags

Freemium games on iOS and Android continue to dominate the app economy, now accounting for over 65% of all revenue generated among the Top 100 grossing apps in the App Store alone. In a series of recent pieces on free-to-play mobile games, we’ve shared insights about the relevance of this business model, consumer spending by price point and what kinds of items consumers purchase.

In this report, we focus on the audience who plays these games. Specifically, we study differences between those who play and those who spend money in mobile freemium games. This study uses data from a sample of iOS and Android freemium games with over 20 million users across more than 1.4 billion sessions gathered from Flurry Analytics, which tracks over 110,000 apps across the major smartphone platforms. Let’s take a look at the results.

In the chart, we compare the relative distributions of time and money spent by age group. Starting on the left-hand-side, the green bars represent which age groups spend the most time playing freemium games. We see that ages 18 – 24 account for the most minutes spent, 32%, followed by ages 25 – 34 who represent 29% of usage. Ages 13 – 17, 35 – 54 and 55+ then account for the rest of usage time at 22%, 14% and 3%, respectively. The average age of the consumer, based on time spent, is 26.6 years old.

Next to the green bars, in blue, we show the amount of money these same consumers spend on in-app-purchases within the same set of games. The top spending group is 25 – 34 years old, accounting for 49% of total dollars spent, next followed by 35 – 54 year olds at 28%. By contrast, the most dedicated users of these games in terms of time, the 18 – 24 year olds, rank only third in terms of money spent, generating 16% of IAP revenue. 13 – 17 year olds, a popular target audience of these games, account for only 5% of revenue. Finally, the 55+ age group delivers 2% of revenue. The average age of consumers who spend money in these games is 32.2 years old.

Broadly, we observe that heavy users of freemium games are younger, while spenders in freemium games are older. The half that uses these games most, 13 – 24 year olds (55% of time spent), deliver only 21% of the revenue. And the half that spends heavily, 25 – 34 year olds (49% of money spent), represent just 29% of usage. We believe much of this has to do with play patterns, disposable income and relative available time.

In social games, consumers can advance in the game through “the grind,” the core set of gameplay activities that allows the user to level up, earn in-game currency and progress. But to progress via “the grind” takes time and patience. For consumers that have more time (or less money), they can afford (or must be) more patient. Younger gamers, presumably high school and college-aged, likely have more time but less money. So the grind is something they’re willing or must commit to, in order to progress. And with more total available time throughout their days, they can play more frequently. Simply put, they become your loyal users, but it’s harder to extract money from them.

On the other hand, 24 – 35 year olds presumably have more disposal income, but less time, due to work and family demands. This combination makes them less tolerant to engaging in “the grind,” but also better positioned to buy their way out of it. They play less often, but make quicker progress by simply spending. Further, when we expand the age range to 24 – 54, this older group generates nearly four-fifths of all revenue in freemium games. In short, your whales may be older than you think.

Our conclusion: Gen Y plays, but Gen X pays.

Freemium Mobile Gamers Spend Most Money on Items They Don’t Keep

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 21:28:38 +0000

Freemium Mobile Gamers Spend Most Money on Items They Don’t Keep

By Jeferson Valadares

Anonymous Wed, 03/11/2015 - 14:28

2011-08-16

Tags

App Insights

gaming

Last month, we published two posts about iOS and Android freemium game revenue. The first showed that, over the first half of 2011, game revenue in the App Store shifted dramatically from premium to freemium, with 65% of all revenue generated among the top 100 games now coming freemium games. In fact, at the time of writing this blog post, all of the top 5 titles in the App Store top grossing category were freemium games, and 22 of the top grossing 25 were games. The second post revealed that consumers spend an average of $14 per transaction when making in-app purchases in freemium games.

With in-app purchases in freemium games driving the bulk of revenue generation in the iOS and Android app economy, Flurry devotes this post to what consumers actually spend their real dollars on. With over a year’s worth of data, Flurry categorized over 57 million purchase transactions across a set of freemium iOS and Android games that averaged over 2 million daily active users.

As in the world of retail goods, the two main categories available for purchase in freemium games are durable and consumable goods. In freemium games, we define durable goods as items that provide a permanent gameplay benefit. Examples include buying armor to increase defense in a role-playing game, or buying a building in a city simulation to increase city revenue. By contrast, a consumable item is something that is depleted when used. Examples include a set of grenades in a war game, or fertilizer that helps crops grow faster in a farming simulation. Finally, we define personalization items as those that are durable but do not add any gameplay benefit (i.e., purely decorative).

The chart shows that over two-thirds of all items purchased in iOS and Android freemium games are consumable, goods that users deplete. Measured another way, approximately half of all real dollars spent within all apps are for game items consumers don’t keep. Based on our data, the most popular virtual purchase, consumable or otherwise, is for “premium” in-game currency. Premium currency can be spent in a number of ways to accelerate progression in a given game, including converting it into “grind” currency, the primary currency that consumers accrue and use through normal gameplay (a.k.a. the “grind”). Premium currency, which also allows consumers to purchase special items that cannot typically be acquired with regular “grind” currency, is said to “alleviate the grind” (i.e., allow a user to advance faster in a game). Games that are designed with consumable items in mind tend to monetize very well. For developers, this offers the best ROI on game development resources.

Next, durable items represent 30% of all in-app purchases in freemium games. From a game design standpoint, it’s important to have a good selection of durable items in a game as it offers important variety to the consumer with respect to the core gameplay, such as erecting buildings in a city. Buying increasingly better performing durable items gives players a sense of progress, which can be important for engagement. Additionally, offering bigger, better durable items allows users to set goals, or even change their gameplay strategy, in order to save up for, and make, bigger purchases.

As a side-note, the ratio between consumable and durable should vary depending on how critical these items are to the core gameplay experience. For example, a city-building game could lean more toward durables (e.g., buildings), since user progression is measured by creating a larger city, which is made up of individual buildings. In contrast, a farming game could lean more towards consumables (e.g., seeds and fertilizer), where the game is about growing, harvesting and selling crops in order to earn grind currency.

Finally, personalization items represent only 2% of purchases. Since these items don’t affect gameplay, consumers purchase them infrequently. Also, consumers don’t tend to decorate, and then re-decorate, in most games. For example, think about how often you change your Facebook or Linked In profile picture. The rule should be that if a game is not largely about personalization, then add just enough of these items to allow players to create their own unique gameplay look and feel.

With Flurry estimating that total U.S. iOS and Android game revenue will surpass $1 billion in 2011, game developers should understand what consumers spend the majority of their money on. As a business model, freemium games are here to stay. While the consumer is indeed purchasing virtual items that are most often consumable, what’s most important to understand is the psychology behind these games. In freemium games, consumers are experiencing compelling, immersive entertainment. They feel gratified when they progress, accomplish goals, create a unique world, and in some cases, show off to their friends. In exchange for this gratification, they are willing to spend real money, and lots of it.

Apple & Google Capture U.S. Video Game Market Share in 2010

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 20:30:27 +0000

Apple & Google Capture U.S. Video Game Market Share in 2010

By Peter Farago, VP Marketing

Anonymous Wed, 03/11/2015 - 13:30

2011-04-15

Tags

Android

Apple

gaming

Last year, Flurry reported that iPhone and iPod touch game sales surged from 2008 to 2009. From a standing start, and in just one year, iPhone games captured 5% of the mature U.S. video game market. A year later, we revisit how the increasing popularity of iOS (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) and Android games continue to increase their U.S. video game market share. With an additional year of trend data, the magnitude of disruption is increasing, in particular within the portable gaming category.

For this year’s report, Flurry once again leverages publicly available market data in the news, released by companies such as the NPD Group (e.g., Gamasutra’s Behind the Numbers series). We combine this data with our own estimates of game category revenues from iOS and Android devices. Flurry Analytics, the company’s free mobile app analytics service, tracks more than 12 billion anonymous, aggregated use sessions per month across more than 80,000 applications. Of this, nearly 40% of all consumer app sessions are spent on games.

For 2010, we expanded our iPhone and iPod touch numbers to include revenue delivered by tablets and Android devices. When running this analysis a year ago, the iPad had not yet launched and Android gaming revenue from 2008 and 2009 had not yet contributed enough revenue to meaningfully affect industry market share. For the sake of a consistent year-over-year comparison in all other aspects of this analysis, we continue to exclude retail PC game revenue, and once again do not include online digital game sales.

Apple and Google Platforms Push Forward into Video Gaming

From 2009 to 2010, iOS and Android game sales increased from 5% to 8% market share within the U.S. video game market. Specifically, we estimate that iOS and Android game revenue increased from $500 million in 2009 to more than $800 million in 2010. Of this, the significant majority of revenue was generated by iPhone games. And while we do not include retail PC game revenue in our total snapshot, which we estimate was $700 million in 2010, it’s worth noting that smartphone and tablet game revenue surpassed the U.S. PC game category for the first time in 2010.

Studying the chart above, console and smart-device games have increased at the expense of portable gaming. Overall, total U.S. game revenue from 2009 to 2010 is relatively flat, totalling $10.4 billion and $10.7 billion, respectively. However, while console game revenue increased slightly, from about $7.4 billion in 2009 to $7.8 billion in 2010, the combination of declines in portable gaming software and a jump in smart-device app sales has squeezed the portable game category down from 24% market share in 2009 to just 16% in 2010. It’s clear that prolific intalled base gains by Apple and Android devices, low priced games (including a very robust free-to-play model enabled by in-app purchases) and seamless digital distribution to games on devices so near to consumers 24-hours-a-day, is driving potent industry-disruption.

Over 2011, we expect to see continued and significant smart-device game growth fueled by the recent launch of iPad 2, iPhone coming into distribution on Verizon, the expected release of iPhone 5, a relentless expansion of Android devices by leading OEMs across all major U.S. carriers, and Google’s enablement of in-app purchase billing, a proven key driver in iOS game revenue.

U.S. Portable Gaming: Mario’s Burning Platform

Recently, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, passionately described a burning platform Nokia had itself set ablaze, largely as a result of its own strategic choices. Allegorically, despite Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata’s stated concern that “these [mobile] platforms have no motivation to maintain the value of gaming” during his keynote at the most recent GDC conference, Nintendo may also be struggling with its own burning platform: Nintendo DS. Let’s look at the numbers.

From 2009 to 2010, iOS and Android game sales have spiked significantly, resulting in nearly a doubling of their market share. With both Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable shrinking in sales, while smart-device game sales simultaneously grew by more than 60%, iOS and Android games now represent more than one third of the portable game category. The net effect is that the U.S. portable gaming category, as we define it, has declined from $2.7 billion in 2009 to roughly $2.4 billion in 2010.

Wedbush Morgan Securities video game analyst, Michael Pachter, points out that the “onslaught of $1 games is going to continue” and that “[Nintendo and Sony] are going to have to share the market with Apple and Android.” Our numbers quantify just how much. Further, as iOS and Android continue to change the paradigm of casual gaming, the battle between Nintendo against platforms such as iOS and Android will intensify. Mario may indeed be standing on a burning platform.

Mobile Social Gamers: The New Mass-Market Powerhouse

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 20:26:22 +0000

Mobile Social Gamers: The New Mass-Market Powerhouse

By Peter Farago, VP Marketing

Anonymous Wed, 03/11/2015 - 13:26

2011-02-22

Tags

App Insights

gaming

Hardcore Gamers are so 2007

As the growth of iOS and Android mobile devices continues to explode, there is a tectonic shift in the landscape of video gaming, a medium that continues to reach the most powerful spenders in the economy. Not only are these emerging platforms attracting droves of existing gamers, but also spawning a new and highly engaged audience: the mass-market mobile casual gamer. The era of marketing singularly to the 18 – 34 hardcore male gamer is officially over.

Given the sheer size of the video game industry, this is a watershed moment. In January 2011, according to the NPD Group, 2010 worldwide video game revenue, excluding hardware, exceeded $15 billion. Strikingly, console game sales were down by 5% in 2010 over 2009. PC sales were up slightly by 3%, primarily due the release of the latest StarCraft installment by studio veteran Blizzard Entertainment. As Flurry described in its analysis last year, hardcore gaming is facing competition from more mass-market-friendly gaming apps on mobile devices. In particular, iOS is taking a bite out of portable platforms.

Below are two charts that demonstrate how age and gender demographics vary between the traditional gaming audience and mobile social gamers.

Reviewing the charts, it’s clear that mobile social gaming is attracting a much stronger female base, as well as a younger average user. Among mobile social gaming, there is also greater density in the 18 – 49 year old bracket, which indicates that iOS and Android devices are attracting users during their earning years versus, in particular, their teenage years, where they likely cannot afford more expensive mobile devices.

Mobile Bigger than Console, Portable… and TV

Just how big is the audience in this new era of smartphone mobile gaming? Consider that Flurry has detected over 250 million unique iOS and Android devices in the market, and is detecting more than 750,000 new devices daily. According to recent reports, this installed base is larger than the combined worldwide installed base of console industry leaders Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3, estimated at approximately 180 million units. Likewise, iOS and Android devices command a larger installed base than the combination of portable game platforms Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, which recent estimates peg around 200 million devices worldwide.

Further sizing the segment of users that plays mobile social games, the audience exceeds that of any U.S. primetime television show, the best of which can top 20 million viewers on days airing new episodes. Contrast this to the 26 million unique users Flurry already detects 365 days of the year, and who spend more than 25 minutes per day in social games. On a broader scale, Flurry monitors more than 300 million user sessions across all games and apps. A whopping 37% of these are from games.

The Consumer behind Social Games: a Marketer’s Dream Target Audience

The audience playing mobile social games is beginning to attract the attention of major advertisers. For this study, Flurry used a sample of over 60,000 social gamers on iOS and Android who self-reported age, gender and location. For parts of this report, where we focus on the U.S. segment of the audience, we further crossed location information with United States zip codes to leverage U.S. Census Bureau data for deeper segmentation.

Let’s start by looking at the concentration of mobile social gamers by international region.

The chart above shows that mobile social gamers live in more developed economies, with the highest concentration in North America, followed by Europe. This hints strongly at a similar geographic footprint to iOS and Android penetration to date, with Asia beginning to grow more quickly as Android, in particular, finds increased distribution in this part of the world.

Next, we display a cross-tabulation of age and gender in a bar chart format for our worldwide sample. This provides the opportunity to study how male and female usage varies across age ranges.

From the chart above, it’s clear that female mobile social gamers are older than their male counterparts. While males have a slight lead in usage in the 13 – 25 year old range, more women play between 26 – 44 years of age. Additionally, referencing the earlier age comparison between traditional and mobile social gamers, the latter are younger, with an average age 28.2 vs. the traditional, more hardcore gamer, who is more often male with an average age of 34. Just below, we display separate charts for age and for gender.

The U.S. Mobile Social Gamer: Affluent and Educated

Studying the U.S. mobile social gamer, we note that she earns over 50% more than the average American, is more than twice as likely to have earned a college bachelor’s degree, and is more likely to be white or Asian.

The video game industry is transitioning from an era of hardcore male gamers who have dominated the landscape, to more mass-market usage across mobile social games. 18 – 34 year old males are being supplanted as the most attractive segment to target by big brands and agencies. The Mobile Social Gamer segment is highly engaged, younger, made up of more females, more educated and more affluent. In terms of usage behavior, they use social games far more often than they watch prime-time television shows, and using for 25 minutes per day, are heavy users of this interactive content. Mobile social gamers are the new mass-market powerhouse.