Advertising Analysis of Mobile Games in May: Rewarded Video Ads are gaining popularity; Chinese Publishers Develop a Liking for Mid-core and Core Games
With the implementation of the new privacy regulations on iOS 14.5 in May, iOS users can refuse IDFA tracking by Apps, which reduces the advertising accuracy of iOS. This has undoubtedly shaken the confidence of advertisers. The advertising of iOS mobile games in May has also seen a marked decline. On the contrary, Google Play mobile games enjoy a certain increase.
On the whole, few changes can be seen in the landscape of overseas Top-Advertising categories and regions in May, while the proportion of ads, in the form of rewarded videos, has increased. As for Top-Advertising list specifically, the Chinese publishers and beyond have shown different preferences for Mid-core and Core games or Casual games.
Based on the mobile advertising intelligence tracked for last 30 days, App Growing Global released the ranking list and analysis. The statistical area covers 42 countries/regions and the data covers 19 global mobile advertising platforms.
01
Overall Gaming Advertising Trends
In May, Mid-core and Core games still take a dominant place in overseas gaming advertising. The top three categories are Role-playing (23.01%), Action (14.31%), and Strategy (11.68%) respectively. Among them, Action games accounts for the largest increase, at month-on-month 6.27%. The largest decline is on SLG (5.35%) and Puzzle (8.98%) games, with the decrease of 2.58% and 2.15% respectively.
The advertising distribution in May do not change significantly, except for Taiwan of China (5.89%), Hong Kong SAR(5.46%), and South Korea (4.12%), which increases by 1.65%, 1.39%, and 1.25%, respectively. The fluctuations in the rest regions are within 1%.
The proportion of advertising forms in the global has changed markedly. The proportion of rewarded video ad (34%) has increased by 11.81%, surpassing In-Feed ad (24.41%), making itself the highest. At the same time, Banner ad (17.43%) also increased by 7.3%.
In-Feed ads are usually put among the reading content. They are weakly intrusive and will not excessively affect the user experience. In-Feed ads of quality and with accurate crowd positioning can often achieve good advertising effects and thus become the choice of most advertisers.
Rewarded video ads require users to watch the whole video before they can get what they want. Therefore, the video completion rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, etc. are higher than other types of ads, and they are also favored by advertisers.
These two types of top-advertising forms, more often than not, account for over half of the total amount of ad, and they are also the first choice of most advertisers.
From the perspective of creative form in May, the proportion of video (69.75%) creatives decreases by 8.01% from the previous month, but it still top the list. The second place goes to HTML（21.01%）creatives, increasing by 11.27% and surpassing image(8.85%) creatives.
02
Monthly Top-Advertising Mobile Games & Publisher List
Comparing with the previous month, we can see from the top 20 list in May that the number of RPG and SLG declines, while the number of Casual and Hyper-Casual games increases to 10. Well-known non-Chinese publishers such as Rollic, VOODOO, and LionStudios respectively strengthen their advertising levels of Hyper-Casual games. PeopleFun’s Wordscapes even rises to the first place sharply.
There are 10 games from Chinese developers in this top 20 list. Besides Project Makeover, Word Connect, Mafia City and other games that are the list regulars, the list gets some newcomers : Efun’s BLEACH: Eternal Soul, eyougame’s 천상나르샤, Zlong Games’ Counter:Side, BLANCOZONE’s 末日喧囂 and Eskyfun’s 王者遠征.
On the whole, Chinese publishers still focus on Mid-core and Core games.
A similar trend is shared in the Rising Advertisement and Top-advertising list in May. Most Chinese developers focus on RPG, SLG, FPS and other types of Mid-core and Core gamesgames , while Non-Chinese publishers concentrate on Casual and Hyper-Casual games. On the Rising Advertisement list of the month, in addition to the above-mentioned 천상나르샤, The King’s Expedition and the old player Word Cnnect, it also concludes Clicktouch’s Game of Khans and Trigirls Studio’s 山海有妖獸 and Kinggame Studio ‘s Bullet Angel.
Among the Top-Advertising Publishers in May, Garena Games, a publisher from Southeast Asia, ranks first with its extremely high amount of ads gathered by its popular games. This publisher, mainly controlled by Tencent as the data shows, has represented a number of Chinese games in the Southeast Asian market.
As for Chinese developers targeting overseas market, there are 10 places, accounting for half of the total. Most of them are familiar regulars, including Magic Tavern, Zenlife Games, Yotta Game, Efun Games, Eyougame, ZlongGames, miHoYo, BLANCOZONE, Eskyfun and Bhome.
In terms of non-Chinese developers, Casual game developers, represented by VOODOO, Lion Studio, KAYAC, and Rollic Games, take up the majority.
03
Analysis of Top-advertising Gaming Creatives
3.1《BLEACH: Eternal Soul》
BLEACH: Eternal Soul is a strategy RPG issued by Efun and authorized by the super-popular Japanese anime BLEACH. The game does a good job in restoring the original anime plot, the artistic style (in the form of advertising videos), and showing the battle scenes of popular characters. Meanwhile, it emphasizes “Officially Authorized”.
Creative 1：
Creative 2：
3.2 천상나르샤
As a fantasy MMORPG aimed at the Korean market, 천상나르샤 makes advantages of numerous live short videos in the advertisement, in addition to the in-game scenes and game characters of art quality as regular RPG does. Korean celebrities are also invited to be spokesperson. All these offer us a glimpse of high budget of the game.
Creative 1：
Creative 2：
The above is “Advertising Analysis of Overseas Mobile Games in May”, log in App Growing Global now to get more mobile advertising intelligence.
*The above-related advertising creatives are sourced from App Growing Global, which are only used for research and analysis. All Rights Reserved.
