Moloco: Mobile market status and Growth opportunities in 2024
2% of most valuable mobile users generate at least one-third of all IAP revenue.
The company collected data on user acquisition for over 4,000 mobile games in 195 countries from September 2023 to September 2024. The study does not include spending in mainland China.
Gaming companies are expected to spend $29 billion on UA in 2025.
71% of this volume will be concentrated in 10 countries. 39.8% of all spending will be in the USA.
Region’s revenue is highly dependent on genre. For example, 65.5% of casino user acquisition is in the USA. However for RPGs, the USA accounts for 25.1%, while South Korea accounts for 24.9%.
Moloco notes an interesting trend - companies spend more money on local or culturally close markets. For instance, American companies spend most of their budget on Western markets (81.6% of the total volume). Chinese companies spend almost 3 times more on Asian markets than American companies.
The general trend is that the higher the UA spending in a specific market (e.g., the USA), the higher the IAP revenue. However, this correlation “breaks” in Asian markets like South Korea and Japan. In these countries, IAP revenue is higher than UA spending. Moloco analysts note that this may indicate that many advertisers don’t understand how to work in local markets.
Moloco also offers an interesting framework for working with markets, highlighting several main blocks. These include English-speaking Tier-1 markets; East Asian countries; Latin American Spanish-speaking countries, and so on.
The highest D7 ARPPU, on average, is in Hong Kong ($37.5); Qatar ($28) and Iceland ($27.4).
70-85% of all IAP revenue is generated by 10% of users. The most valuable 2% of players generate 35% to 45% of all IAP revenue.
In its methodology, Moloco identifies as promising those markets with a low cost of acquiring a paying user (CPP) but high (relatively) ARPPU.
❗️However, it’s strange that the list of “promising” markets includes those that have long been considered “base” markets - the USA, South Korea, Japan, leading European countries.
Source - interactive tables by country and genre are available by the link.