Evolving In-Game Advertising for a Privacy-Driven Era

The mobile gaming sector continues to experience significant growth, with Adjust's 2021 data revealing increases in sessions, installs, retention rates, and time spent in-app compared to 2020. This upward trend is particularly notable given the substantial growth seen in 2020 due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. As a result, in-game advertising has become an essential component of mobile growth strategies. A study by data.ai and IDC predicts that mobile games will account for approximately 61% of the gaming market share by 2022, up from 52% in 2021. The skilled user acquisition teams in the gaming industry have successfully found, targeted, acquired, and retained users while navigating privacy changes and post-IDFA challenges on iOS. The overall industry-wide opt-in rate is currently 26%, with games showing a promising opt-in rate of 31% as of Q1 2022. Hypercasual and action games have opt-in rates of 39%, while racing games have reached 40%. Some individual titles have even achieved opt-in rates above 70%. With such high consent rates, gaming revenue is on the rise, and marketers have access to a significant amount of data to work with. In-game advertising has become a compelling option for mobile marketers, with the mobile games market generating $7.4 billion from player spending in December 2021. Eight mobile games had their most successful year in 2021, each generating over $1 billion. Securing opt-in is a crucial step in any post-IDFA strategy, and once achieved, there are multiple ways to work with the consented device-level data received. The success of the mobile games vertical highlights the importance of a strategic user acquisition team. While automation is essential, a new focus on user privacy requires mobile marketers to revisit their strategies and find a balance between automation and creative, data-minded UA teams. In a post-IDFA world, success on SKAdNetwork relies on leveraging conversion values to understand user behavior, measure campaign performance, and optimize for growth. SKAdNetwork provides space for 6-bits of downstream metrics, which can be assigned to any value expressed in binary, allowing UA teams to decide which events to include. The key is identifying events that occur within the first 24 hours post-install that are indicative of future events or key events to track. Mobile game publishers have an advantage with the Identifier for Vendors (IDFV), which is still available on iOS and allows for cross-promotional campaigns. Leveraging the IDFV is popular in hypercasual games, where apps are cross-promoted at key churn points to keep users engaged. In-game ads come in various formats, and matching the right ad with the right users and moments in-game is crucial. Data can inform which players are more likely to engage with specific ads and when. As the gaming industry continues to adapt to the challenges of advertising on mobile, measurement is key to evolving alongside the industry. Staying ahead of the competition requires close monitoring of in-game ad campaigns with granular data.