That’s according to a new study from Tapjoy, which further notes that a majority of gamers are also now more likely to engage with rewarded ads.

Findings from the study were released in a research report titled “The Modern Mobile Gamer: The Marketer’s Guide to Holiday Gaming Trends.”

All told, the report suggests, this holiday season should be a busy one for mobile gamers.

Nearly three-quarters of mobile gamers (72 percent) said they intend to download at least one new game during the upcoming holiday season, while 80 percent reported that they expect to spend more time playing games during the holidays.

“This study validates why the the mobile gaming audience presents such a great opportunity for performance and brand advertisers alike – particularly during the holidays,” said Shannon Jessup, chief revenue officer of Tapjoy. “Mobile gamers are already a uniquely engaged audience, but holiday downtime means that they spend even more time in-app, are more curious to try new games, and are more likely to engage with in-app advertising, making it the perfect time for advertisers to drive value for their campaigns.”

Other key findings from the study include:

• Mobile gamers will play more hours per day during the holidays. While 8 out of 10 mobile gamers say they’ll play more often during the holiday season, 30 percent estimate they’ll play an additional three or more hours per day. Eleven percent report they’ll play an additional five or more hours per day.
• Three-quarters of mobile gamers will download a new game. Seventy-two percent of mobile gamers intend to download at least one new game during the holiday season, and nearly half (43 percent) will download two or more games. Twelve percent will download five or more games.
• Gamers are most likely to download Action titles. Gamers said they were most likely to download Action titles this holiday season, followed by Puzzle games, Adventure games, Strategy games, Simulation games and Casino or Card games.

To learn more, get the report here.

The post Tapjoy Holiday Prediction: Mobile Gamers to Install and Play More Games appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Addressing a need in the mobile game market for cost-effective marketing tools, the Megacool API has exited beta with nearly one million GIFs already shared and is now available for all developers at megacool.co.

So how does it work?

Megacool’s technology lets players record a short clip of the gameplay, for instance a high scoring round or a winning move, in the form of a GIF without impacting game performance. With only a few quick taps, players can send that GIF as well as a download link for the game directly to a specific friend or contact via SMS text message and other social channels. This helps spread the game organically and virally through digital word-of-mouth between friends, which players trust more than traditional in-game advertising.

“Traditional user acquisition for mobile games, consisting of in-game advertisements in the form of disruptive video and static interstitials, is fundamentally broken,” said Nicolaj Broby Petersen, founder and CEO of Megacool. “In a system where the biggest publishers on the market can buy up advertising inventory and drive pricing up, only they can compete. Developers needs new and innovative ways to spread their games in a cost-effective way.”

To learn more about Megacool, check out the company’s official site here.

The post Megacool Launches Word-of-Mouth Marketing Tool for Mobile Games appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

With data compiled in a revealing infographic, the visual highlights vitally important global mobile gaming data including projected revenues through 2020, monetization by region, and average CPI indexes by region.

The infographic was created by AppLift, a mobile adtech company and Newzoo, a market intelligence provider for the global games, e-sports, and mobile markets verticals.

To check out the bookmark-worthy insights, take a gander at the visual shared below.

The post AppLift Explores Opportunities and Trends Across Mobile Gaming Landscape appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Gallop Labs, if you’re not familiar, is a data science startup whose technology won the Facebook Mobile Innovation Award.

Big Viking Games has long had a relationship with Gallop Labs, whose other clients include The New York Times, Accuweather, and RBC Royal Bank.

Gallop’s insights allow clients to profitably grow their user bases by building audiences that optimize marketing spend and minimize user acquisition costs.

“We’re very excited to bring the talented Gallop team on board,” said Albert Lai, CEO of Big Viking Games. “Their proven track record of turning data into actionable audience insights will help us provide more engaging gameplay experiences for our existing players.”

The post Big Viking Games Gobbles Up Gallop Labs appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“It’s always been assumed Nintendo planned to monetize Miitomo with micro-transactions, but now we finally know what DeNA and Nintendo actually intend to charge users real-world money for,” reports MobileSyrup. “President of DeNA, Isao Moriyasu, recently told The Wall Street Journal that while “communication will be central to the game,” the company is exploring various options for monetization.”

The plan?

“At first we plan on selling clothes users can buy for their Miis,” said Moriyasu.

Apparently, clothes don’t just “make the man,” they’ll also “make the Miis.”

“Miitomo places more emphasis on entertainment,” explained Moriyasu. “The process of discovering new aspects of your friends via Miis can be quite fun. One distinct aspect of Miitomo is how you can configure your Mii to have it look very similar to yourself. Communicating with friends who actually look like your friends in real life is a distinctly different feeling from text-based communication. We’re thinking of linking the game with users’ Facebook friend lists. I think it could be fun connecting with friends people don’t often communicate with.”

Moriyasu said Miitomo will “have a distinct Nintendo feel and that the app will feature the same level of nostalgia fans have come to expect from Nintendo’s iconic franchises.”

Miitomo is set to launch in 2016.

The post In-App Clothing Purchases for ‘Miis’ Will Monetize Nintendo’s Premier Smartphone Game appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post to MAW by Mark Robinson, CEO of deltaDNA

When it comes to monetizing free-to-play mobile games, developers often find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place. With in-app purchases (IAP) and in-game advertising both disrupting the player experience to some extent, striking the right balance between player experience and profitability is a huge challenge.

The fact is the large majority of players will never make an in-app purchase, which means in-game advertising is often the primary revenue driver for many developers. But if ads aren’t shown at the right time and at the right frequency, it can send churn rates through the roof.

In the early days, developers agonized over native ad design and display as they were highly sensitive to players’ perceived concerns. Now interstitials and rewarded video ads are much more an accepted part of the experience for players, particularly if they have no plans to pay.

Despite this shifting perception, integrating ads into your game still has to be approached with caution. Here some of the most common pitfalls that developers make:

1.  Serving ads to every player

Tolerance to ads varies hugely from player to player, so by serving ads to everyone you’re guaranteed to upset a good percentage of your players (who will no doubt leave the game as a result).

We know from our data that some players respond better to IAPs while others are more ad responsive. Therefore, developers need to take a more intelligent, data-led approach and develop ad strategies which are more closely aligned to individual player behaviors.

2. Serving ads at the wrong time

The last thing a player wants to see after failing a mission or losing a life is an ad. Showing ads to players after defeats or when they are finding the game frustrating is likely to lead to one conclusion – the player will leave.

The emotional state of the player viewing the ad is important not only to retention, but also to generate ad revenue through clicks and installs.

3. Being overly cautious

Developers are clearly aware of the delicate relationship which exists between players and ads, so many take an overly cautious approach and avoid serving ads until much later in the player lifecycle.

This approach will certainly please your players, but with low retention rates commonplace in F2P, by the time you decide to serve ads many players will have already fallen out of the game for one reason or another. You’re then missing out on a huge revenue-generating opportunity.

It’s all about striking an appropriate balance, and if this can be achieved from the outset, then there’s no reason why players shouldn’t be served ads from session one. particularly as it can be an instigator for players to pay.

Our analysis shows that most games that show interstitial ads do so within the first 10 minutes of gameplay. We also know that ad frequency has little to no impact on app store ratings and rankings.

4. Sticking to just one ad network

If you want to maximise your revenue from ads, you need to use multiple networks. Not all networks will fulfil your request for ads, and the price they’ll pay you can vary, often amounting to nothing if the space is unfilled. Sticking to one ad network can cripple your ad revenue as a single network will likely provide just 25% fill.

One option is to set up an active cascade system where the highest eCPM is at the top. It will then default to the next one down if the network choose not to fulfil the ad. This can be quite a tricky and time-consuming process to get right and if not automated, will need constant review. Dynamic ad mediation then selects the best deal by cascading ad networks automatically.

5. Making ads a game play roadblock

If players aren’t engaged, they won’t spend. One of the most common reasons players leave a game is they’re annoyed with frustrating monetization mechanics, or overzealous advertising getting in the way of the game experience. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Rewarded video is one example of how ads can be integrated into a game with minimal impact on retention. Because they are opt-in and offer a direct benefit in terms of extra resources, players are much more willing to watch the ad, especially if it’s well targeted.

A recent research project conducted by the deltaDNA’s game design team found that among top ranking games, around 30% contain some kind of rewarded ad mechanic.

Today’s F2P marketplace is becoming increasingly overcrowded, and as a result players are more likely than ever before to discard a game. With ‘big data’ technology the door is open for game makers to tailor in-game advertising to players based on their behavior, serving ads to players that are responsive to them and getting the frequency of ads seen by each player right. Not only does this help to monetize games more successfully, it creates an experience that players are far more likely to enjoy.

The post How to Play the Ad Game in Games and Not Lose appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The mobile gaming industry continues to be one of the top performing sectors of both the mobile apps and gaming industries.

That’s according to a new report from Tapinator.

Already a $25 Billion industry itself, a few industry analysts predict it to surpass console revenue in 2015 and boom to reach $40 Billion by 2018.
With gamer expectations on the rise, companies with recent advancements of notice are Tapinator, Inc., Electronic Arts Inc., Glu Mobile Inc., Activision Blizzard, Inc. and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.

Tapinator, Inc., if you’re not familiar, is a designer, developer and publisher of mobile games on the iOS, Google Play, and Amazon platforms.

Just this week, one of the company’s games, Combo Quest, became the “Free App of the Week” on Apple’s iOS platform — the fourth feature placement for Combo Quest in the App Store.

The post Tapinator: Mobile Gaming Apps Continue to Outperform Console Games appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

According to reports coming to light over the past 24 hours, Electronic Arts’ head of mobile gaming has abruptly departed after two decades of service to the company.

Frank Gibeau’s departure is being called “sudden,” although CNET cites expectations among some analysts that the writing has been on the wall for a while with regard to a possible shake-up in EA’s mobile division.

Gibeau had been considered a contender for the role of chief executive at EA after John Riccitiello’s sudden exit in March 2013.

But that promotion never game.

“Throughout a more than 20-year career, Frank’s made many significant contributions to the company, our people and our games,” an EA statement reads. “We thank Frank for his achievements at EA, and we wish him all the best in his next chapter.”

The departure, we’re told, doesn’t reflect a waning interest in mobile games on the part of EA.

The post EA’s Mobile Chief Takes an Unexpected Walk appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

So far, they are seeing over half off all traffic to Beat the Leader coming from smartphones and mobile devices.

Not just that, but mobile availability has drastically increased participation in all off their 90+ restaurants. They have well over 1,000 regular participants this year, with approximately 6,000 coming from mobile devices.

As one of the added draws of taking their popular game mobile, mobile allows for a larger range of ways in which customers can engage with and challenge other players from around the nation. Shrewdly, Old Chicago even implemented some great digital rewards for players.

Old Chicago partnered with Movement Strategy to create their new digital game, which is proving to be an overwhelming success.

“With the improvements to the mobile experience we’re aiming for a 90 percent retention rate week over week – meaning users are returning to make picks and view leaderboards,” Eric Dieter, co-founder of Movement Strategy tells Mobile Commerce Daily. “In 2013 this was just over 70 percent.”

The post Old Chicago Takes Their Football Challenge Mobile appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

According to Valuewalk.com, “Online gaming is still just 8.9% of the global gambling industry by revenue, generating $40 billion of the $451 billion total in 2013, but that’s still a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25% between 2000 and 2013.”

Gabelli analyst, Camillo Schmidt-Chiari, says that he expects online gambling, “to slow to 5.7% through 2017, which is still better than the global gambling industry’s projected 4.3%, but this average misses the big opportunity presented by mobile gaming.”

So why would mobile gambling apps, for example, be such a desirable thing? Well, according to the same report, “Unlike online gamblers, mobile gamblers are less likely to shop around for the best odds, and Schmidt-Chiari says that mobile operators have managed to get better margins and a higher average revenue per user (ARPU).” Schmidt-Chiari then adds, “There’s also a lot more interest from people who might not have been willing to gamble in the past.”

Given the plethora of mobile games that already emulate online gambling, there’s no denying that smartphone users are warming to the idea and practice of gambling on their mobile devices. And once the legal hurdles are jumped, there may be no stopping the runaway momentum of what some see as an inevitability —  smartphones becoming the slot machines of the future.

The post Why Mobile Phones May Soon Put Slot Machines Out of Business appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.