By Connie Hwong, global content marketing director at Verto Analytics
Whether you’re a big-time game publisher or indie, the challenges that every mobile game developer faces are the same: acquiring users and keeping their attention well past download. It’s simple to say but hard to do: less than 20 percent of all game downloads result in active users after 30 days.
Even with real-time data and sophisticated mobile analytics, how many mobile gaming industry insiders really know what’s working well? Almost all game developers struggle to answer these questions:
- Do certain mobile games possess superior adoption characteristics?
- Which audience traits elicit passion and repeated use?
- Why do some games retain loyal users while others fade into obscurity?
- How do you fare against your competitors when it comes to player acquisition and retention?
At Casual Connect USA, Verto Analytics released a new research report, Leveling up Your Mobile Game: Using Audience Management Data to Boost User Acquisition and Engagement. Verto Analytics derives its insights from measuring the same segment of players — daily, hourly, weekly — and their usage patterns across every device, app, and platform they use throughout the day. Using this single-source measurement methodology, Verto provides deep insights on the most persistent challenges for game developers across the industry.
The report goes beyond a simple analysis of mobile game downloads by providing a look into how the fragmented, yet growing, mobile gaming industry figures into the app ecosystem as a whole. The insights underscore key tactics for gaming companies to wage a successful battle for consumer attention. Verto’s retention and stickiness frameworks and behavioral segmentation models are explained with clear pointers on how gaming companies could benefit from using measurement data - and how to best use this data. The research also reveals demographic profiles of the most important segment of players, detailed usage patterns, and acquisition metrics.
Report highlights include:
- U.S. adults spend an incredible 1.15 billion hours each month playing games on smartphones and tablets – this activity is second only to social networking
- Mobile gamers comprise 57 percent of all mobile app users
- Depending on the mobile game, 40 to 60 percent of users drop off within the first full day post download. Moving beyond the first few days to 30 days post download, average retention figures drop to between 10 and 20 percent of users who have successfully installed the game. In other words, fewer than two out of every 10 successful game downloads retain users after 30 days.
- Less than three percent of active players make in-app purchases
You can get a full copy of the report here.
Connie is the global content marketing director at Verto Analytics. Prior to Verto, Connie held positions at ABB and Gigaom, and worked with brands like AOL and Zendesk. When she’s not tracking down (and telling) interesting stories behind Verto’s data and people, she’s busy cycling around Berlin in pursuit of strong coffee and interesting music.
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