This article by Natalie Stepanova, Head of Marketing, Apptica, describes the best gaming apps in iOS and Android distributed by country. She explains how ads in games give a sense of the state of the mobile advertising market and the role the US and Hong Kong are playing in the gaming industry.
Since the mobile industry is growing fast all over the world, in-app advertising becomes more and more popular. According to the research pursued by Activision Blizzard Media and Newzoo, Gaming is the third most popular app category preceded by social media and music. As for advertising, gaming apps are the most advertised ones due to the fact that there is a broad variety of games in different categories and so it’s difficult for a developer to distance himself from competitors, find individuality and promote it. And to make it clear that an application A is not the same as application B, it may take a lot of time, a lot of advertising.
The study conducted by Apptica in 35 countries found that 5 countries only cover more than half of the mobile advertisement of gaming category. Those countries are the US, Hong Kong, South Korea, France, and Great Britain. Applications from these countries make up 56% of the mobile advertising market in the gaming category in iOS and Android. It’s followed by Japan, Israel, Singapore, Cyprus, and Germany which make up another 20%. This index shows the advertising activity of the apps from both iOS and Android platforms, from January 1 to June 1, 2019.
If we look at each gaming category in more detail, we will see that the United States is not leading in every instance. For example, categories “Education” and “Family” are mostly covered by publishers from Great Britain with the USA in a second place. Those two categories are also represented by developers from Lithuania, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, and Cyprus. However, in the UK itself, the United States still leads in category “Education”, as well as India and China. It turns out that publishers from the UK focused their advertising activities more outside than inside the country.
As for other gaming categories, they’re mostly covered by advertisers from Asian countries like South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Among European users, the most active are advertisers from France, Britain, and Germany.
A role-playing category is represented by advertisers from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, US, and Taiwan in iOS while Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam are represented in Android. France is on top of casual in Android, but this is due to the fact that in this category there is one active publisher – bweb media – which develops a large number of casual games for kids. For example, from January to May, they bought traffic for 91 games and made only 213 unique creatives which is only 2 creatives per game.
Simulation category is remarkable for having Russia in the fifth place. Advertisers from Russia are also leading in the category “Tools” in Android.
“Sport” is occupied by the US, UK, Korea, Japan, and France.
Strategy” is represented by Hong Kong, Korea, the US, China, and Germany.
As for ad monetization, the applications featuring more ad are owned by developers from Israel, US, and Cyprus in Android as well as the US, France, Great Britain in iOS.
This index is based on information on the 100 most productive advertising applications.
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