The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has spearheaded a massive change in how consumers use and interact with apps. Nowadays, more people are turning to mobile apps for entertainment, remote works, and day-to-day tasks.
Therefore, to help you better understand your audience and the current state of the app economy, SocialPeta has compiled its latest report, 2021 H1 Global Mobile App Marketing Whitepaper.
The report analyzes the game and application data fetched by SocialPeta on the global advertising platform. It also summarizes the mobile app industry statistics for 2021 H1. This also includes advertising case analysis of top games and applications.
2021 H1 statistical highlights
Global mobile market overview
According to SocialPeta’s findings, the average number of monthly mobile game advertisers are 18K, and the monthly average number of non-game app advertisers are 70K. The number of advertisers in April is the largest, with a total of over 93K. It increased by 5.79% compared with the 2020 H2. This indicates that the mobile apps advertising industry continues rising despite the global economic crisis.
Click to enlarge
Share of mobile app advertisers (mobile games and apps)
At 22.98%, the mobile game has a sizable chunk of the total app’s advertising. An increase of 3.49% over the same period last year.
In contrast, non-game apps account for 77.02% of the total app’s advertising. The margin looks impressively wide until you break the non-game apps into different industries and sectors.
Gone are the days when you develop games and rely on organic reach to have a reasonable return on investment. Now, the industry is highly competitive and your games’ success or failure depends on your commitment to strategic advertising.
Click to enlarge
Struggling with Global App Growth?
Reach a wider quality audience with Zoomd’s ingenious UA technologies and services. Boost downloads, sign-ups, and engagement the smart way.
Learn MoreThe number of advertisers & creatives
Mobile Games – In 2021 H1, the total number of advertisers collected over 38K, and each advertiser ran 504 creatives on average. This indicates a 183% increment compared to 2020 H1.
Click to enlarge
Non-game apps – In 2021 H1, a total of over 129K advertisers were captured, and a single advertiser placed 368 creatives, a 39% increase in contrast to 2020 H1. SocialPeta garnered a cumulative crawling of over 47.6M of ads creatives in 2021 H1. That’s a 38% increase compared with the same period in 2020.
Click to enlarge
The proportion of various types of apps on Facebook
Mobile Games – RPG, Puzzle, and Casual games have the largest amount of creatives on Facebook.
Click to enlarge
Non-game apps – Shopping app creatives accounted for nearly 20%, the U.S. market has the most mobile app creatives at 11.21%. This is followed by the UK, Canada, Australia, and Mexico at 9.02%, 8.62%, 8.30%, and 4.58% respectively.
Click to enlarge
Mobile Games – Facebook’s news feed average CPC was at $1.89 with 128% YoY. However, the average CPM was $14.71 also at up to 128% YoY; the average CTR was 1.78% while the YoY is up to 80%.
Click to enlarge
Non-game apps – In 2021 HI, CPC averaged $0.2 while YoY increased by 5%. Also, CPM averaged $3.31, with a 49% YoY increase. CTR averaged 2.13%, while YoY increased by 65%.
Click to enlarge
Global top 30 mobile games advertisers
Mobile Games – The gaming industry is all about dominance and stamping your authority through target ads. SocialPeta ranked the 30 leading advertisers, with most of them stemming from Chinese developers, accounting for over 70%. The research shows that casino games are the most advertised on Facebook, followed by SLG.
Click to enlarge
Non-game apps – News Break tops the chart for the two top spots. Followed by Instagram on iOS, Duolingo on Android.
Click to enlarge
Case study – Creative characteristics analysis
Hot casual game creative characteristics – Gameplay extension.
Casual game creatives are generally based on the gameplay. However, advertisers can continue to tweak the gameplay material while integrating creative innovations. With elements of extended performance, there will be an improvement in interactive data for more insightful advertising.
Click to enlarge
Hot MMO creative characteristics – Showcase of roles.
Advertisers use occupation, identity display, and powerful skills to captivate gamers’ attention. The character could be elegant, hazy, or cool depending on target-audience preferences. The new trends show that female users are the most receptive to these types of ads.
Click to enlarge
Hot financial app creatives characteristics – live-action ads
Live-action scripts make the creative interesting and more authentic. This type of ad leverages storytelling that resonates with the users. Also, the live actions script displays realism and digs deeper into the lives of the people telling the story to create engagement and optimize lead conversion.
Click to enlarge
Mobile media buying trends
Trends #1: Platform shifts bring great opportunities
Standard channels like Google and Facebook are great. However, if you’re not open to other marketing channels, you may be missing out on the big piece. The best scenario was TikTok’s success in 2020. It got to the #1 place in app downloads and made it to 2nd place in consumer spending. This shows that app developers have to be ahead of growing trends and jump on opportunities to build an authority earlier when the platform shifts. Incredibly, SocialPeta’s advertising data shows that the proportion of video ads is still growing.
Trends #2 App publishers and developers will develop additional, more creative ways to incorporate in-game advertising natively into their mobile games in the future.
Research shows that many users find ads annoying, especially when it doesn’t relate to their interest. Many mobile users have been reported to uninstall apps that make
their ads too glaring. Now, developers are using more innovative means of integrating in-game ads in such a way that it blends perfectly into mobile games without raising eyebrows. For mobile apps advertisers to accomplish this, they need to understand their target audience, identify their interests and know what they find exciting even if it comes as an ad. Moreover, they need to find a way to make the ad spring up natively.
Trends #3: Creativity is a key factor for the success of mobile advertising
App developers need to think outside the box to get into the mind of the users. People get bored easily, following the same pattern as others will only cause you to lose prospective users while serving your ads. One smart way to accomplish this is to grasp more advertising intelligence, followed by testing, tweaking, and incorporating creative ads. Innovative and unique ads easily attract users and arouse their curiosity in trying out your game, even if they have never been heavy gamers.
Most successful games typically undergo three phases of ads; launching, the first three months, and on clocking a year. On average, 80 ads go into launching, around 300 ads within the first three months of getting the mobile game into the market. The most intensive ad creatives are reserved for 1 year of launching the game, which is around 1,000.
Click to enlarge
Summary and conclusion
The mobile app usage statistic makes good reading, which indicates that the use of mobile apps is a continuously growing trend. The game industry leads the mobile advertising if assessed on a per-industry basis. However, running ads is not alone to win the market, you need to understand your audience and develop creative means of capturing their attention while incorporating in-game ads natively.
Our experience in the past three years shows that most creative teams are gaining recognition for the strategies they deploy in pushing their user acquisition campaign. The unpredictable, intriguing, and often dramatic vibes creatives inject in redefining incorporating robust marketing concepts into games ads has not gone unnoticed. We started to notice how hyper-casual games have transitioned into laudable efforts into marketability and user retention. They infuse all these strategies into one game to develop a single game that combines several marketing themes or successful minigames.
To learn more about mobile marketing and ads, kindly download our Whitepaper, which also includes:
● Mobile app intelligence of multiple advertising platforms such as FB, Google Ads, unity ads, Vungle, TikTok, etc.
● Detailed data analysis covers the United States, CIS, Asia, and Southeast Asia.
● Excellent advertising case analysis.
