While the economic fallout from the pandemic and recession is taking its toll on advertising budgets around the world, the gaming app economy has proven remarkably resilient. According to AppsFlyer’s latest 2023 State of Game App Marketing report, game developers and marketers have invested almost $27 billion in advertising in 2022.
Key facts:
- Android game installs (2022 vs. 2021) increased by 8%. iOS installs are down 5% . This reflects the ongoing challenges that iOS app marketers are still facing following Apple’s privacy changes.
- Total gaming app ad spend worldwide in 2022 reached $26.7 billion. Almost half of them are in the US (12.2 billion) due to the high volume and high cost of media. Japan comes in second with almost $2 billion in spending.
- At the same time, the number of installs of games in the US for Android increased by 19%, while for iOS it decreased by 1%.
- An 88% increase in CPI on iOS from Q1 2021 to Q4 2022 to $3.75 per install as iOS marketers are forced to accept high prices to attract valuable Apple users. Annual prices showed a jump of 35%.
- Average in-app purchase (IAP) revenue fell 7% in 2H 2022 compared to 1H 2022, with iOS down -13% and Android down 6% (-1% and -14 % year on year, respectively). The trend is mainly driven by lower purchases in genres such as RPGs and casinos, where the economic downturn appears to have weighed on consumer spending.
- Top 3 genres in terms of spending on UA are Match, hyper-casual games and Casino. Together they will consume 44% of the total promotion budget.
The report data is based on 38 billion installs across 18.6k apps and $13.9 billion in ad spend between January 2021 and December 2022. You can read the entire study by genre here.