There’s a deluge of new data and research to wade through every week.
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Honkai: Star Rail earns Mihoyo over $500m
Just as Honkai: Star Rail makes its debut on PS5, the original mobile game has now earned Mihoyo over $500m, according to Appmagic data. Lifetime downloads to date are just over 32m, says the data firm.
Top five markets to date by revenue are China ($207m), Japan ($120m), US ($63m), South Korea ($32m) and Taiwan ($18m).
Data.ai’s new State of App Revenue report, digested
The big headline number in this one is $500bn. That’s Data.ai’s estimate of total IAP and mobile ad spend in 2022, and it suggests mobile ad spend represents just over two thirds of that total. This is total app and games spend, remember.
This breakdown of that $336bn ad spend says 65% of that was non-gaming apps, mostly YouTube and the big social networks. Remove those, though, and 70% of mobile ad spend went to games.
Looking at IAP spend, Data.ai says half of the $167bn spend across apps and games in 2022 was on iOS. Google Play grabbed 27% of app store spend, and third party stores in China accounted for the remaining 23%. 66% of that total $167bn spend was on games.
Of 2022’s top ten apps by IAP in the US, half were games: Candy Crush Saga, Roblox, Coin Master, Royal Match and Pokémon Go.
Later in the report, there’s a look at Voodoo’s IAP/ad revenue split:
This data from the US market shows a growing proportion of IAPs in Voodoo’s revenue mix. Data.ai says the French firm was the top earner in games from ad revenue in the US last year. Mob Control and Collect Em All are the clear top earners as Voodoo increasingly goes hybridcasual, as we reported earlier this year.
Next, on top ad revenue earners by category, hypercasual is way ahead with puzzle and simulation second and third.
The top five mobile game genres alone accounted for more than half of all ad revenue monetisation in all mobile apps, says Data.ai.
Nine out of the top ten in 2022’s top companies by ad revenue in the US were games companies, led by Voodoo. The French firm was followed by Lion Studios, Zynga, SayGames, Rollic, Daily Innovation (maker of a Bible app), Supersonic, PeopleFun, Easybrain and Crazy Labs.
There’s also some analysis of ad strategy within the word game genre, starting with a by-market breakdown of the top ten contenders. This is the US market:
Words With Friends 2 topped key markets like the US and UK. Fugo’s Words of Wonders is also spotlighted for monetising in emerging markets like Brazil, Italy, Mexico, Spain and Turkey.
Words With Friends 2 is also top by average ad revenue per user, says Data.ai, averaging around $1.80 per monthly active user in Q1 2023 across AdMob, Vungle, AppLovin, UnityAds and IronSource.
Wordscapes and Wordle have larger user bases, but lower ad revenue per user than Zynga’s market leader. Wordscapes leads the genre via IAP revenue, however.
Finally, there’s a look at where Wordscapes is spending:
Data.ai notes here that ARPU for Wordscapes is behind Words With Friends 2 in the US, perhaps because Wordscapes targets non-US markets more. “Roughly 85% of Wordscapes’ ad revenue monetization came from ad networks like AdMob and AppLovin in Q1 2023, and it’s been shifting away from video creatives over time,” it says.
The top subgenres advertising within Wordscapes are tabletop/solitaire, match/connect tile games, casino/slots games and match puzzlers.
Ad measurement firm Tenjin says in its latest report that average eCPMs by platform are down 26% on Android and 12% on iOS when you compare H2 2022 and H1 2023. For the same period it says IAPs are up 23% on Android and 24% on iOS.
Top five countries by installs for H1 2023 on Android are India, Brazil, USA, Indonesia and Mexico. On iOS they are USA, UK, Japan, Canada and Germany.
Top ad networks by installs on Android in H1 2023 are Google Ads, AppLovin, Mintegral, Meta and IronSource. For iOS it’s AppLovin, Mintegral, IronSource, Meta and Google Ads.
Grand Hotel Mania hits (almost) $100m
My Games’ management game Grand Hotel Mania is four years old, and to celebrate the firm put out a press release stating the game has been downloaded 19m times and has reached “total revenue of almost $100 million”.
My Perfect Hotel, Race Master 3D and Bridge Race led the way in the hypercasual space last quarter, according to Appmagic’s latest blog.
It notes the sudden rise of SayGames’ My Perfect Hotel, a slight decline for Supersonic’s Bridge Race, and new entries into the top ten from Xgame’s Magic Piano Tiles and Freeplay’s Twerk Race 3D.
Netherlands-based developer GamoVation said on LinkedIn that its puzzler Tile Club has reached 10m installs under four months after release.
