Mobile Monday: Ad Interaction on Mobile and Sony Focuses on Mobile Gaming

Digital Turbine is constantly keeping tabs on the mobile world, and every week, we’re sharing the most interesting and important need-to-know stories and articles. In this edition of Mobile Monday, we’re covering reports of success from advertising in mobile games and Sony’s latest move into gaming on mobile. Learn all about these stories in this week’s Mobile Monday!

Success with Advertising on Mobile and In-Game

It’s no surprise that mobile games saw exponential growth over the past two years during the height of the global pandemic. While growth earlier this year may have slowed a bit, mobile is still the channel to prioritize when it comes to gaming and engaging with audiences in the future. According to a report from Liftoff, mobile is now 3.3x bigger than console gaming, and on the monetization side, completion rates for in-game rewarded video ads are off the charts, hitting 97% for Puzzle games.

Users are more than happy to interact with ads in mobile games, as video completion rates hit 90% for watching a hidden object, 69% for coloring genre ads, and 69% for comic ads. And when looking at return on ad spend (ROAS) across mobile games, Lifestyle games are seeing the top numbers, closely followed by Simulation and Puzzle games.

Looking into insights by device type, Android users cost significantly less to acquire than iOS users, making advertising on Android an attractive method of increasing KPIs. With similar ROAS after day 7 and day 30, Android users will deliver results for advertisers, yet they will cost significantly less.

Looking at this report, it’s clear that gaming will continue to see growth on mobile platforms, with Android operating systems making moves to take a higher portion of the mobile advertising space.

Sony Goes Mobile — and In-Game They Go

Console and PC expanding to mobile isn’t new, but when one of the biggest names in the industry decided to look at mobile — it’s headline news.Sony announced the acquisition of European mobile game developer Savage Games. Insider Intelligence looked at some of the reasons Savage was the pick, with multiple mobile developers out there that could have been acquired. Listing studio leadership that came from Rockstar games, creators of the massive hit GTA, and a first game expected to be a live service mobile shooting game — the high-grossing potential is there. Other live shooting games with mobile versions, like Fortnite, Call of Duty, and the recently-gone-mobile Apex Legends, have been strong performers. Sony is also expected to extend its television and film compared high production value games to the mobile sphere, extending their reputation and building additional revenue streams.

Bring on the Ads

The console leading Sony’s business is not an ad business, while mobile gaming and ads go hand in hand. The opportunity the company sees in this revenue stream is huge, with the U.S. mobile gaming ad revenues reaching $6.26 billion this year and $7.87 billion by 2024. Mobile game spending has also remained strong despite some downturns. Apex Legends, the shooting game which recently launched on Mobile, has already hit $13 million in revenue.