Apptica: The State of the Mobile Gaming Market and Advertising in 2023
Overall market data; retention benchmarks; insights on ads.
The company collected data on 37 countries from January 1 to December 31, 2023. Only the App Store and Google Play were taken into account. All revenue - Gross.
iOS Games
Downloads on iOS in 2023 decreased by 9.75%, with a total of just over 6 billion downloads. Casual projects, action, and Simulation genres are leaders.
Revenue from iOS games in 2023 was just over $35 billion (-6.7% from the previous year). The RPG genre saw the sharpest decline, by 12%, but it still remains the largest.
Android Games
The total number of downloads on Android in 2023 was over 51 billion. Puzzle games saw the strongest growth (+5.25%), Simulation genre (+5%), card games (+4.8%). Leaders in decline were RPGs (-12%), arcade games (-10%), and strategies (-8%).
Apptica counted the total revenue from Android games in 2023 at $20 billion.
Retention in Games
On average, Retention on Android is lower by 5-7 percentage points.
Casino games are leaders on iOS in R1 - 40.6%. This genre also leads in R30 on Android (9.1%) and iOS (13.6%). RPG games also show good figures in R1.
The average Retention for 1 day in games is 32.4%; for 30 days - 6.6%.
Downloads Leaders
Subway Surfers (225.4 million downloads); Candy Crush Saga (199 million) and Roblox (195 million) - leaders on Android in terms of downloads.
The situation is significantly different on iOS. Eggy Party (45.9 million downloads) is in first place, followed by MONOPOLY GO! (44.2 million), and Royal Match (42.8 million).
Eggy Party is not on the Android charts because Apptica does not take alternative stores in China into account.
Revenue Leaders
Coin Master ($425.9 million), MONOPOLY GO! ($415 million), and Candy Crush Saga ($369 million) - revenue leaders on Android.
Honor of Kings ($1.5 billion), Game for Peace, the Chinese version of PUBG Mobile ($611.5 million), MONOPOLY GO! ($609 million) - revenue leaders on iOS.
Advertising Market
According to Apptica's estimate, there are currently 109.8 thousand advertisers on the mobile market (-8.5% YoY). Of these, 53% are gaming advertisers.
Playrix is the most active advertiser on both iOS and Android.
The most mobile traffic is purchased for casual projects. For example, a quarter of all puzzle games on Android.
76% of all creatives on iOS are videos; 18.5% are static images; 5.5% are playables.
On iOS, only 4.6% of creatives last more than 30 days. The majority - 52.4% - last no more than 1-3 days.
In the case of Android, 75% of all creatives are videos; 23% are static; 2% are playables.
On Android, 3.9% of creatives last more than 30 days. 64% stop performing within the first 3 days.
It is noted that the popularity of UGC and influencers in advertising is growing. However, the use of misleads has decreased. In 2024, experts expect more AI-generated creatives.