Coin Master is one of the most popular and lucrative games on the planet, but no-one ever seems to talk about it. So let’s talk about it.
It’s a slots/builder hybrid game that has run paid promotions with Jennifer Lopez, Khloé Kardashian, Cardi B, the Spice Girls and David Schwimmer to generate buzz – and it’s been working. Appmagic data suggests that Coin Master is about to hit a couple of big milestones.
Developer Moon Active is close to totalling $3bn in IAP over its lifetime ($2.993m at the time of writing) with almost 290m downloads to date (289.8m as of today). Appmagic data is based on developer payout, so does not include the 30% the platforms take; the gross consumer spend is even higher.
Coin Master is consistently up there in the top grossing charts with Roblox, Candy Crush Saga, Clash of Clans and Genshin Impact in the US, UK and major EU countries, and its developer, Moon Active, is quietly earning eye-watering amounts of money from the game every day.
According to Appmagic data, Coin Master peaked on November 27 2021, when it earned Moon Active $4.2m in a single day. Over the last 30 days, the game has earned its developer an average of $2.3m daily, and in the last two months, the game has earned Moon Active around $16.4m per week, on average. Moon Active earns about $75m per month from the game.
Based on the last 30 days of data, Coin Master is downloaded 140k times a day, on average. Its single-day peak was on September 19 2020, when it was downloaded 1.1m times in 24 hours. Based on the last eight weeks of data, Coin Master is downloaded around 902k times per week, on average. That works out at around 4m downloads per month.
Tel Aviv, Israel-based developer Moon Active has obviously been canny when it comes to user acquisition strategy too. UA expert Matej Lancaric says the promotions started out with UA ads in which ordinary players – usually a couple – have their Coin Master base destroyed and they take revenge. Then they started using celebrities.
“You have probably seen a Kardashian playing Coin Master,” says Lancaric. “Those ads started rolling back in 2019. It was June 2020 when they introduced new celebrities into the mix. This creative campaign features not only the Kardashians, but Cardi B, Jennifer Lopez, Ben Higgins, Rick Harrison, Rae Sremmurd, Terry Crews, Joan Rivers, NeNe, and Emily Ratajkowski. It was J.Lo that accelerated the number of downloads and revenue growth.”
Early 2020 saw the biggest revenue bump to date, says Lancaric, when players were at home and Moon Active were spending big on UA. Then it was the turn of the Spice Girls in December 2021.
“Brilliant move! Warming up the UA activities in December when all other developers are decreasing budgets is really brave,” says Lancaric. “Pushing the limits in December and the start of 2022 paid off as they saw record revenue months.”
Moon Active then went local with its ad creatives, says Lancaric, using the likes of German celeb Daniela Katzenberger and Polish singer Doda to target audiences more specifically.
Today, Moon Active is spending evenly on UA in all western Tier 1 countries – US, UK, Canada, Australia – with some other markets like Brazil, Mexico, Poland and Spain in the mix.
“50% of their budget goes to Facebook User Acquisition with 29% Google and the rest is distributed to all other main channels,” Lancaric says. “The last two weeks of September are especially interesting because they started scaling their budget heavily on Unity and Applovin in Thailand.”
Lancaric estimates that half of Coin Master’s 4m average monthly downloads are paid UA installs. “I would assume they are spending around $500k per day which makes it $15 million a month. A pretty crazy number!”
